VIP Viewpoint | I’m Not Ready to Give Up on Kevin Costner’s Horizon @VIP_Viewpoint | Uploaded July 2024 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
I’m Not Ready to Give Up on Kevin Costner’s Horizon
Kevin Costner's devotion to the classic western has to be respected. The actor and director has benefited from the genre (Silverado, Wyatt Earp, Open Range) since the beginning of his Hollywood career, and the genre has benefited from him as well. However, as you watch Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1, the first of a four-part series, you can't help but question if his allegiance has become foolish. Ultimately, Costner has already invested $38 million of his personal funds in the epic western. Furthermore, it's not like moviegoers in 2024 are waiting in line outside theaters with signs requesting more westerns. I'm not sure if I would encourage him to continue working on this side project if I were his accountant.
Horizon is every bit as masterfully crafted and profoundly moving as one could anticipate from the Dances with Wolves director who won an Oscar. Furthermore, despite clocking in at a pitiful three hours (well, three hours and one minute), it never feels tedious or slow. But it's overly expansive, opaque, and overbearing. It appears that Costner has chosen to adapt a classic John Ford story for Monument Valley, but he lacks Ford's narrative coherence. The main problem with Horizon, in fact, is that it feels like five pounds of tale packed into ten pounds of packaging. It boasts a staggering number of settings, a large cast of characters, and enough twisting storylines to last five TV series seasons. Which is precisely how Horizon feels at times: like an oversized television series pilot spanning several decades. Not Yellowstone without the Dutton family.
Two years prior to the start of the Civil War, in 1859, in the San Pedro Valley, the story—and it truly is a saga—begins. Recently, small groups of stoic settlers from the east have come to examine the banks of a river where they intend to start over and establish new lives and homes. A flyer advertising peace, prosperity, and expansive vistas in a brand-new utopia named Horizon has drawn them there. However, Horizon is more than simply a location on a worn map; it's a mentality, a make-believe Eden that can go as soon as raiding Apaches destroy their houses. Not that it will put an end to the manifest destiny dream of Americans. No matter how many attacks there are, the wagons will just keep coming, as Danny Huston's tired portrayal of an outpost colonel puts it.
Meanwhile, in the icy Montana Territory, Georgia MacPhail's character Frances Kittredge and her daughter Elizabeth, played by Sienna Miller, elude another raid by taking refuge in a collapsing subterranean dirt bunker. By sticking a rifle out of the earth and breathing through its barrel, they are able to survive. It's one of the few genuinely fearless scenes in the film, driven by a combination of claustrophobia and terror. And yet, Costner has already uprooted and moved on to the next setting, the next cast of characters, and the next plot thread before it has a chance to truly strike you with the force that he undoubtedly meant.
We eventually encounter Costner's character, Hayes Ellison, a seasoned horse trader with a drawling rock-tumbler croak, more over an hour into the movie. This introduction takes place in the Wyoming Territory, another locale. Ellison is confronted right away by a pushy prostitute named Marigold (Abbey Lee), who has a convoluted past of her own and sees him as a quick way out of her filthy, muddy dump of a town. Horizon comes to life a little when Costner arrives in style. Even though I would much rather watch the 69-year-old actor in baseball movies than westerns, there is something nostalgic and reassuring about watching him mounted on a horse. He belongs to an extremely uncommon type of genuine Hollywood movie stars who, wherever they go, instill moral clarity and inherent morality. The Old West fits him like a well-worn saddle, much like Gary Cooper.
After all these personalities and settings have been established, Costner jumps about between them like a hyperactive card dealer dealing cards for three hours. Because of this, the film has an even stronger sense of episodic television. Like varmints in a Whac-A-Mole game, a crowded who's who of trustworthy character actors (Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Jena Malone, and Jeff Fahey) come and go far too rapidly. A few of these characters, however, are let down by the film's jerky editing, since it seems like a few sequences are missing. One clear instance is when Elizabeth, played by MacPhail, says a heartfelt farewell to two young soldiers who are leaving for battle. However, we're not entirely sure how they're related. Does she have a romantic relationship with any of them? Are they related by blood? Who knows? Whatever history they may have had ended up on the cutting room floor.
I’m Not Ready to Give Up on Kevin Costner’s Horizon
Kevin Costner's devotion to the classic western has to be respected. The actor and director has benefited from the genre (Silverado, Wyatt Earp, Open Range) since the beginning of his Hollywood career, and the genre has benefited from him as well. However, as you watch Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1, the first of a four-part series, you can't help but question if his allegiance has become foolish. Ultimately, Costner has already invested $38 million of his personal funds in the epic western. Furthermore, it's not like moviegoers in 2024 are waiting in line outside theaters with signs requesting more westerns. I'm not sure if I would encourage him to continue working on this side project if I were his accountant.
Horizon is every bit as masterfully crafted and profoundly moving as one could anticipate from the Dances with Wolves director who won an Oscar. Furthermore, despite clocking in at a pitiful three hours (well, three hours and one minute), it never feels tedious or slow. But it's overly expansive, opaque, and overbearing. It appears that Costner has chosen to adapt a classic John Ford story for Monument Valley, but he lacks Ford's narrative coherence. The main problem with Horizon, in fact, is that it feels like five pounds of tale packed into ten pounds of packaging. It boasts a staggering number of settings, a large cast of characters, and enough twisting storylines to last five TV series seasons. Which is precisely how Horizon feels at times: like an oversized television series pilot spanning several decades. Not Yellowstone without the Dutton family.
Two years prior to the start of the Civil War, in 1859, in the San Pedro Valley, the story—and it truly is a saga—begins. Recently, small groups of stoic settlers from the east have come to examine the banks of a river where they intend to start over and establish new lives and homes. A flyer advertising peace, prosperity, and expansive vistas in a brand-new utopia named Horizon has drawn them there. However, Horizon is more than simply a location on a worn map; it's a mentality, a make-believe Eden that can go as soon as raiding Apaches destroy their houses. Not that it will put an end to the manifest destiny dream of Americans. No matter how many attacks there are, the wagons will just keep coming, as Danny Huston's tired portrayal of an outpost colonel puts it.
Meanwhile, in the icy Montana Territory, Georgia MacPhail's character Frances Kittredge and her daughter Elizabeth, played by Sienna Miller, elude another raid by taking refuge in a collapsing subterranean dirt bunker. By sticking a rifle out of the earth and breathing through its barrel, they are able to survive. It's one of the few genuinely fearless scenes in the film, driven by a combination of claustrophobia and terror. And yet, Costner has already uprooted and moved on to the next setting, the next cast of characters, and the next plot thread before it has a chance to truly strike you with the force that he undoubtedly meant.
We eventually encounter Costner's character, Hayes Ellison, a seasoned horse trader with a drawling rock-tumbler croak, more over an hour into the movie. This introduction takes place in the Wyoming Territory, another locale. Ellison is confronted right away by a pushy prostitute named Marigold (Abbey Lee), who has a convoluted past of her own and sees him as a quick way out of her filthy, muddy dump of a town. Horizon comes to life a little when Costner arrives in style. Even though I would much rather watch the 69-year-old actor in baseball movies than westerns, there is something nostalgic and reassuring about watching him mounted on a horse. He belongs to an extremely uncommon type of genuine Hollywood movie stars who, wherever they go, instill moral clarity and inherent morality. The Old West fits him like a well-worn saddle, much like Gary Cooper.
After all these personalities and settings have been established, Costner jumps about between them like a hyperactive card dealer dealing cards for three hours. Because of this, the film has an even stronger sense of episodic television. Like varmints in a Whac-A-Mole game, a crowded who's who of trustworthy character actors (Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Jena Malone, and Jeff Fahey) come and go far too rapidly. A few of these characters, however, are let down by the film's jerky editing, since it seems like a few sequences are missing. One clear instance is when Elizabeth, played by MacPhail, says a heartfelt farewell to two young soldiers who are leaving for battle. However, we're not entirely sure how they're related. Does she have a romantic relationship with any of them? Are they related by blood? Who knows? Whatever history they may have had ended up on the cutting room floor.
