Kevin Costner co-writes, directs and stars in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. Here’s our review of the new western.
You’ll probably find a more reliable review of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 out there if we’re being blunt here. This is my Marvel. Kevin Costner’s never been involved in a western I’ve not liked, and many of them I outright love. His return to the saddle – not least to the director’s chair too, for the first time since the superb Open Range (2003) – has famously come about because he had to pay for it himself. And when you’re paying the bill, you can do things you want you want to.
Which is what Kevin Costner has done, signing off every last shot, with not a Hollywood executive sitting on his shoulder.
Directing, co-writing (with Jon Baird) and taking on the lead role, the setup of Horizon: An American Saga is in the first word of the title. We join the story in 1859, with vast expanses of the American landscape being absorbed by the camera. Horizon, as we’re constantly reminded, is a place to buy some land and set up home. A wide collection of characters are drawn to it, and inevitably, the ownership of the land is contested.
Like many threads in the film, that’s not something that’s fully explored in this opening chapter of a planned four-film saga, and the weighty three hour running time often feels like Costner patiently moving the necessary pieces around the board, getting them in place for what’s to come.
This is cinema as it’s not really made now. Very patient, slow, willing to take time to build up a large cast of characters. And then puncturing the patience with moments of quick brutality. Very early on in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 we see a young child lifeless on the ground, and it’s a real jolt. Then, in the first hour, a really well-staged siege sequence puts characters we’ve been getting to know in peril, and quickly. Costner is not above investing time with someone and having the harshness of his world dispense with them. This is a film that’s brutal, and early.
I think the high point of Costner’s action scenes as director is the messy, primal shoot out that we get in Open Range, and we’re somewhere between that and Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp film (that Costner took the lead in of course) in how Horizon approaches those moments.
Against that, it’s delicately old fashioned, even as the makeshift grave markers behind to mount up. And the whole enterprise benefits enormously from smart casting. The nature of what Costner is trying to put on screen means characters don’t get too much screen time, and he needs actors with memorable faces, and who can make an impact with the space they’re afforded.
It’s effectively three narrative threads being developed side by side. Costner’s Hayes Ellison is a loner, who befriends a young woman and soon attracts trouble. That’s one. Another sees Luke Wilson leading a group towards Horizon (the land, not the film), notably with a British couple among their number. Terrific to see Ella Hunt as one of them. Six years ago she was headlining the wonderful British independent comedy horror musical Anna & The Apocalypse, and she’s clearly a significant part of the Horizon story now.
And then perhaps the key thread in this film, Sienna Miller’s Frances Kitteridge, who we meet at the start simply trying to survive, but then – along with her daughter – rebuilding her life. Sam Worthington’s Lieutenant Gephardt may or may not become part of it.
There are some terrific sequences throughout the film. A tense sort-of stand-off during the purchase of some guns, for instance. Two brothers and a land transaction (I’m keeping these descriptions deliberately vague). A shootout that simmers and then sparks. And then that siege near the start, that demonstrates Kevin Costner the director absolutely knows where to put his camera.
As for Costner the actor – top billed on the cast list – he reminds me a little of Batman in The Dark Knight Rises: that is, he’s barely in it. He takes a while to appear, a beautiful shot as he looks out over the rich Wyoming landscape. But having given himself the space to tell his story, Costner’s Hayes Ellison is a small part of a film with a very large cast.
In fact, we get as much of him on screen in the tease for Chapter 2 that plays at the end of Chapter 1. Given that the first Horizon movie – very much in the title of the film – comes to a slow, careful stop rather than leaving any kind of cliffhanger – it took me a second to realise I was being shown a promo for the next film. I remember the tease for Back To The Future Part III that played in cinemas at the end of Back To The Future Part II, and that was marked with some sort of interstitial title card. None of that here.
Commercially, I did have to conclude that Costner is edging his luck here, but I admire him for it. I wouldn’t call Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 a prologue per se, as the story and characters are in motion. But it does feel like a setup for what’s about to come. There are a lot of tensions and conflicts here, but also the sense that someone’s cooking a delicious-looking meal that we’re not fully allowed to feast on yet. Or, to go for another metaphor, that the dominoes are set up, but they’re not being pushed over yet.
Still, it’s a beautiful film to look at, with John Debney’s score a worth accompaniment to it. As a standalone film, it’s a little disparate, separate from the connective tissue that’ll surely enrich it. Yet I got three hours in a cinema with imagery and storytelling that nobody else is doing like this at the moment.
Somewhat inevitably, I’m very much on board for chapter two.
