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Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 Movie Review

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is a 2024 epic western film directed by Kevin Costner and starring himself opposite Sienna Miller and many others. It’s such a messy experiment.

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“All I’m trying to do is get as many of us as I can, as far as I can“

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In 1859 families discover the lure of the Old West as they settle in territories from Wyoming to Kansas. Meanwhile, a gruff cowboy soon finds himself on the run with a prostitute and a young boy after killing a fellow gunman. This is the first of a planned tetralogy of movies almost wholly produced and made by Costner himself. This first installment was a huge box office flop and it got muted critical reception, but I was intrigued by the prospects of a truly epic and cinematic film as we lack those these days.

But I have to say that I was quite disappointed. I mostly agree with the critics’ assessment that this project was more suited for television than film format. TV shows today are enriched by bigger budgets and better technicalities, but are still essentially shows. Movies, on the other hand, are increasingly becoming small or serialized and the latter was the case here, which is unfortunate. The film even ends with a montage of things to come, which very much made it feel like a television series or miniseries than the first entry in a movie franchise. Movies should be at least somewhat self-contained and this one never was.

Horizon started off incredibly strong. The very idea of making a film that is showing Native American characters doing pillaging and murdering white people in today’s culture was a brave one and I admire Costner for having the guts to do it. Eventually we realize that they were just defending their land, land that was sold to these white people without offering them any protection. The depiction of the natives is a complex and realistic one, but I wished to have seen more of them as this was very much made from the white characters’ POV.

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But going back to that sequence, it was so epic, cinematic and brilliantly constructed that I was taken aback by just how amazing it was. This section almost had the feel of a home invasion horror flick, which was quite refreshing and modern for this overly traditional genre. Had the rest of the film had at least some of that energy and verve it would have been pretty incredible. But sadly the remainder of the picture was devoted to setting up its sequels without trying to serve us a compelling story and interesting characters in the present.

Horizon has a staggering number of characters, thus it failed to develop any of them properly. Costner assembled a pretty strong cast here of great movie and television actors, but they needed better roles. Costner cast himself in that typically broody, cool and mysterious protagonist role and I would be fine with it had he been more aware of this archetype, but the character is self-serious instead of parodic. Sienna Miller was reduced to playing a female prostitute archetype while Jena Malone was interesting at first, but eventually underdeveloped. Giovanni Ribisi was too over-the-top while Danny Huston was wasted on a very small role.

Most of these characters are archetypes instead of fully developed personalities. The main plot hinges on this baby for some reason and why the baby is important is never explained, though it obviously has to do with revenge. The film depicts the expansion to the west during this era and the numerous conflicts and travails that these people went through, but I couldn’t care for any of them due to their weak development, which led to an emotionally empty experience. Characters come and leave and the same goes for plot threads that are often not even connected with each other at all.

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Horizon: An American Saga is worth seeing for the visuals alone. The cinematography is terrific and the production design fantastic. The film captured the breathtaking vistas and epic grandeur that often characterized the most spectacular westerns of yesteryear. The sound, editing and costumes are all very strong too, though there are instances where people don overly modern hairstyles. The score is the highlight for me as it was suitably grand, exciting and vintage in feel.