Early on into the three hours of viewing Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 I thought back to last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where I saw Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon for the first time. That brilliant movie is a full throated condemnation of the genocide of Native Americans by white people who claim the U.S. as their own. Horizon is not that.
There is, separate from all of this, a bit about a group of pioneers in covered wagons in Western Kansas. They are led by Luke Wilson’s Matthew Van Weyden, who has to deal with some fussy Brits played by Ella Hunt and Tom Payne. We also briefly meet an Apache played by Tatanka Means. I assume he will have more to do later, which is also what I can say for most everyone on screen.
The lack of conclusion for any of the characters—except for the ones who die—make it almost impossible to evaluate Horizon without caveats. But at the same time, it is punishing to ask audiences to invest this much time in a theater, especially given that there are apparently three more parts coming. The first two are due to be released this summer, with Chapter 1 in June and Chapter 2 in August.
I’m not sure why Costner didn’t turn this into the television project it so wishes to be. Perhaps he just wanted to one up Yellowstone, the wildly popular Taylor Sheridan show, on which he played John Dutton, and which he decided to leave. But as a cinematic experience it is aggravating in multiple ways. If you’re not mad at how offensively backward it all is, you’ll be pissed about all the stage setting.
