Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1

I will continue to update this post as the score changes.

Verified Audience Score History:

• 70% (3.90/5) at 50+

• 72% (3.90/5) at 100+

• 69% (3.80/5) at 250+

• 71% (3.90/5) at 500+

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten

Critics Consensus: Kevin Costner doesn't lack for ambition as he sketches this frontier saga across the widest of canvases, but Horizon's first chapter proves too diffuse in scope for it to satisfy as a self-contained endeavor.

Metacritic: 46 (38 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

As a stand-alone film (which it isn’t, but let’s pretend for a moment), “Horizon” is by turns convoluted, ambitious, intriguing, and meandering. But it’s never quite moving. - Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Any of these plotlines might have sustained an hour of compelling television but they don’t add up to much in this awkwardly stitched quilt, which rarely provides the space for anyone’s experiences to resonate. - David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

A spectacularly unsubtle movie. 1.5/4 - Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

“Horizon” is the kind of auteur project that makes one long for the idea of studio notes, for anyone to push back on Costner’s worst instincts. Unfortunately, he proves to be the judge, jury and executioner of his own passion project. 1.5/4 - Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

The film may be pretty to look at, but this passion project isn’t likely to generate much of it. - Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

The dark reality of manifest destiny is a worthy topic, and worthy of a much better film. One in which we have even a modicum of investment in any of the characters. 1/4 - Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

It’s a semi-profound if not exactly original concept, sometimes articulated in that hamfisted-yet-poetic way Costner’s worked since his still-greatest directorial statement, “Dances with Wolves.” It’s delivered best visually... 2/4 - Bob Strauss, San Francisco Chronicle

“Horizon,” so far, anyway, is more about a certain set of movie memories than a movie of its own. 2/4 - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Part of the pleasure of Horizon is the sheer, magisterial sweep of the thing – with mountains and buttes and mesas like these, who needs CG? But its texture lives in small, telling details. 4/5 - Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK)

Costner boasts an instinctive understanding of the archetype and thus elevates the role and each line beyond the possibility of camp. 3/5 - Kevin Maher, Times (UK)

The film’s impressive sense of scale and majesty is amplified by the swirling John Debney musical score. It’s just a pity that the exposition is so clunky and so slow on the draw. 2/5 - Geoffrey Macnab, Independent (UK)

Costner’s real reverence for the classic western dances with disaster by passing off the first of his four-part saga as epic filmmaking instead of a trio of speechifying, clumsily linked one-hour episodes that play like a TV series with no direction home. - Peter Travers, ABC News

Nobody has done more to keep the western flame kindling on the big screen than Kevin Costner, but the audacity of his latest rodeo feels like overreach, if not outright folly. - Brian Lowry, CNN.com

But a film – certainly a Western – needs to have a plot, a bit of credible characterisation, and a structure that preferably includes a beginning, middle and end. Horizon doesn't have any of those. 1/5 - Nicholas Barber, BBC.com

I’m just not sure how much of a buy-in audiences will feel when this movie wraps up, even if the final five minutes is a ludicrous montage of “scenes to come.” C - Jordan Hoffman, Entertainment Weekly

At least Horizon accomplishes one staggering feat: it makes one wonder if we were maybe a little too hard on The Postman. - Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

The first part of a planned four-part epic saga strives for a lot, but serves more to remind us of the best of the genre without achieving it itself. - Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine

It's fine for an epic to sprawl, but you want a sense of purpose at the same time, and this one sometimes loses its way. Still, it’s handsomely shot and well performed, a throwback to the glory days of event-movie horse operas. 3/5 - Helen O'Hara, Empire Magazine

It has the cinematography you’d expect of a Western, as well as the vast landscapes and the emphatic, sweeping music... What it doesn’t have is anything original to say if, that is, it has anything to say at all. - Deborah Ross, The Spectator

So expansive and incomplete that it resembles a modern television series awkwardly edited into feature form. - Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

The biggest problem with Horizon is that, even with its lengthy running time, Costner has only scratched the surface of the “saga” he’s trying to tell. There is no arc to what happens, just the seemingly unending introduction of characters. - Esther Zuckerman, The Daily Beast

These aren’t characters so much as the spokes of a plot in human form, each of their storylines moving as if being pulled by horses across the entire span of the American West. C- - Ryan Lattanzio, indieWire

The film is all table-setting, with the stories lacking in polish and dramatic momentum and the characters never developed beyond archetypes. 1/4 - Derek Smith, Slant Magazine

The biggest issue with this film is that in its rush to tell all these stories, it doesn’t have time for the kinds of nuanced moments that make characters feel alive and real. - Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence

The often bewildering and somewhat underwhelming first installment of Kevin Costner's Western epic is long on characters but short on story. 2/4 - Oliver Jones, Observer

Retroactively treating the frontier as the direction in which we were always headed is a slick way to absolve individual settlers of making the decision – then and now – to benefit from genocide. - Radheyan Simonpillai, Zoomer

While the first film in the possible “Horizon” series does well in setting up future pictures, this single film is a chore to sit through. 2/4 - Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com

A visually impressive endeavour that sets the stage for a larger journey. While it struggles with pacing and narrative cohesion, it manages to hold promise for future instalments to build upon. Impressive stuff, but a little too schmaltzy in places. 3/5 - Linda Marric, HeyUGuys

SYNOPSIS:

In the great tradition of Warner Bros. Pictures’ iconic Westerns, “Horizon: An American Saga” explores the lure of the Old West and how it was won—and lost—through the blood, sweat and tears of many. Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure will take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.

CAST:

• Kevin Costner as Hayes Ellison

• Sienna Miller as Frances Kittredge

• Sam Worthington as First Lt. Trent Gephardt

• Will Patton as Owen Kittredge

• Jamie Campbell Bower as Caleb Sykes

• Giovanni Ribisi as Bailey Pickering

DIRECTED BY: Kevin Costner

STORY BY: Jon Baird, Kevin Costner, Mark Kasdan

SCREENPLAY BY: Jon Baird, Kevin Costner

PRODUCED BY: Kevin Costner, Howard Kaplan, Mark Gillard

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Robert J. Scannell, Danny Peykoff, Marc DeBevoise, Armyan Bernstein, Rod Lake, Charlie Lyons, Barry M. Berg

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: J. Michael Muro

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Derek R. Hill

EDITED BY: Miklos Wright

COSTUME DESIGNER: Lisa Lovaas

MUSIC BY: John Debney

RUNTIME: 181 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2024