The San Pedro Valley is the land of opportunity for many in the East looking to start a new life in the vast West at the Horizon Settlement.  The land, however, is on the Apache hunting grounds and they defend the acreage from encroachment by the expansionists.  Nearby, the US Army has set up a camp, but soon many of the men are called back East to fight in the Civil War.  Meanwhile, a wagon train is making its way towards Horizon, unaware that the Apache has reclaimed the land and the settlement has been ransacked and burned to the ground. 

Kevin Coster directs Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, a self-financed passion project he co-wrote with Jon Baird.  Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, the massive 181-minute film – part one of at least two, but upwards of four – sets the stage for a decades-spanning, period drama that found theatrical distribution through Warner Brothers.  Despite its runtime, the film is very much a part of something larger, but while it is narratively frustrating as a film, as a work of story, Costner is weaving an engaging tapestry and audiences never doubt there is an ending in mind; it is just unfortunate that is does not come in this first part. 

Horizon opens almost wordlessly as a band of Apache watches a team of surveyors staking out some land by the bank of a river.  We then cut to Desmarias (Angus Macfadyen), a missionary, looking for the Horizon Settlement.  Being told he passed it already, he returns to find the bodies of the surveyors.  He gives them a Christian burial, and with another shift in time, soon Horizon is once again flourishing, but this time on the opposite bank.  Costner, at least to this point, is never going back in time, but he does little to show the progression of time, and after the initial subtitle to demarcate a new location, the onus is on the audience to keep track of who is who and where they belong, even as the threads begin to cross.  He is not looking to stump his audience, but he is demanding their attention in a time when big-budget filmmaking is often stripped down to be its most widely accessible form; perhaps operating in the dusty Western genre afforded Costner some liberties in his storytelling. 

For the next hour, we follow Frances (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail), widowed after her husband, James (Tim Guinee), and son, Nathaniel (Hayes Costner), are murdered by an Apache raid.  Cinematically, the midnight raid – another extended, mostly wordless sequence – is exciting, but emotionally it is very difficult to get onto the film’s wavelength.  The cinematic language tells us that Frances et al are the heroes of this tale, but morally and with the knowledge of how the United States government will beat down the Native people, it is very difficult to empathize with the settlers as we see their stolen land be reclaimed on screen.  Costner, in an effort to show the ruthlessness of the attack, villainizes the Apache even though they are protecting their land.  As the film is a work of historical fiction and notably not a revisionist Western, it fits the genre template and within the confines of broad strokes truth, but with our modern understanding of this history, it is incredibly uncomfortable to watch especially as this film cannot be seen as a product of its time as many of the earlier expansionist tales can lean back on. 

Horizon would have been greatly improved, though, had it tried to visually emulate the films which it is thematically paying homage.  Possibly due to the price, Costner had J. Michael Muro shoot on digital and, quite plainly, it just looks bad.  Muro frames well and moves well, but the images that should be beautiful sweeping vistas with rich colors that we can feel look like mud.  It is almost distracting to see images like these in locations like these on the big screen because while the scenery is majestic, it is so tied in our minds to the technicolor and cinemascope Westerns but has none of that same awe-inspiring visual quality or color.  There is no getting around it, the influence of Yellowstone and whatever bad blood transpired there has poisoned the well and Costner seems to have morphed this project into a direct rebuke of Taylor Sheridan and Paramount’s massive hit series, down and including its digital form.  Further, editor Miklos Wright was instructed to assemble the film like it was television, separating the narrative into three cleanly defined arcs that operate largely independently of each other and we visit each location for long swathes of time as if they are their own segregated episodes playing out; binge watching on the big screen. 

Because of this pacing choice, it is not until we are past the one-hour mark that Costner rides into the frame for the first time.  Hayes Ellison (Kevin Costner) gets himself unwittingly involved in a Northwest-based plot that we caught only a quick glimpse of very early in the film where Lucy (Jena Malone) shoots, but does not kill, James Sykes (Charles Halford), before she runs off with her infant son, Sam (Cleo Eringer-Parkerkast, Nyla Eringer-Parkerkast).  Lucy, and her sister, Marigold, have taken up residence and aliases in a small mining town in Wyoming where, as fate would have it, James’ sons, Caleb (Jamie Campell Bower) and Junior (Jon Beavers), are in pursuit of Lucy.  This is probably the most traditionally minded thread, calling back to the shoot ‘em up Westerns complete with a clear good vs evil plot, and helps to make Horizon feel like something is happening, but it is only a part of the larger picture. 

As things begin to heat up in Wyoming, forcing Hayes and Marigold (Abbey Lee) to flee the town and find somewhere else – somewhere South – to hide, the action shifts East to the Santa Fe Trail where a wagon train led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson) is making their way West.  The inertia slows down considerably here to a horse’s pace, but the characters bring a new flavor to the film and it helps to keep things interesting.  This plot revolves around a posh British couple, Juliette (Ella Hunt) and Hugh (Tom Payne), who are treating this travel as more of a vacation than the hard work that the rest of the train views it as.  Costner is not quite punching down on Hugh who is quickly scolded by Van Weyden for sketching in his book and not helping the men work, but he offers some comic relief in the disparity between his mannerisms and the gruffer tones of the men we have been following to this point.  It is low-hanging, sure, but it feels a lot more natural than some of the more engineered comic scenes, often with the camera following behind various children at play flashing unnatural and devilish smiles to the lens. 

There is an undercurrent that courses through Horizon, teasing at violence often seen initiated by the Apache and in turn, levied against them.  In the final hour, there is a secondary story that runs parallel to the wagon train of a band of scalp hunters, and while it is some of the most overtly violent moments of the film, it has a better balance than how the film opens.  The bandits were residents of Horizon who fled before the military came, and they are enacting their revenge on the tribe, but the film notably paints them as the black hats, mostly because it wields Russell (Etienne Kellici), a young boy, as a moral compass who slowly begins to see the Apache not as people who are different, but simply as people.  This seems to be a seed of a future encounter with Taklishim (Tatanka Means), the milder and more peaceful-minded brother of Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), both sons of Tuayeseh (Gregory Cruz), the Apache chief.  Pionsenay forms a war party while Taklishim remains with the tribe and it has all the markings of a Greek tragedy of a brother having to turn against a brother and the transition of power between generations.  It makes sense as Cosnter has never diminished the scale or scope of his film, calling it a “Saga” out of the gate, but it is unfortunate that audiences will need to wait to get any resolution. 

In lieu of a proper conclusion, Costner wraps Chapter 1 up with a minutes-long montage of what is to come, essentially integrating the trailer into the final moments of the film.  It is one of the most frustrating choices of the entire affair, but remarkably, Costner does not alienate his audience and the hooks are set.  We have whiffs of where these various stories will go, and we are excited about it so in that sense Horizon is a rousing success.