Full Review: Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Kevin Costner's personal project not only falters, but weakens his legacy through its incompetence and bigotry

When we consider the history of filmmaker ‘passion projects’, we see a litany of oddball manifestations of artistic interest or obsession. Something which had nagged at the director for, assumedly, years. A project so esoteric that they needed to earn the cachet to make without the traditional concerns over profitability or awards considerations. Typically, the creations are self-evident: an obvious display of something acutely envisioned that was bursting forth from somewhere deep within a filmmaker’s heart. Whether it be David Lynch being given the resources to make Blue Velvet after the calamitous production of Dune or John Cassavetes’ entire mainstream career seemingly just being a source of financing for his directing career, which is felt in the desperate urgency found in his films, the passion project is not an exercise in vanity, but one that is completely unbridled by obligation, calmed by the winsome breeze of freedom.

To say that Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (what a brutal thing to type) lacks anything resembling a zeal for filmmaking would be underselling how thoroughly bizarre the film is as both an artistic ambition as well as a movie adhering to the form of film. The film’s director, old-school A-lister Kevin Costner, fresh off a four-year run as the lead on the Western TV show Yellowstone, has left the small-screen world to return to the silver one, behind the camera for the first time in 21 years, since 2003’s Open Range. By all metrics, this would certainly seem to qualify as a passion project. Costner, having worked diligently over the last few years to not only keep himself in the public eye through a mix of his popular TV show as well as his occasional DCEU appearances, has also amassed a small fortune which he had apparently earmarked for this sprawling epic. And sprawl it does.

There are many elements of Costner’s film that standout as remarkable—which is to say that they are worth remarking upon—however, they are exclusively the film’s numerous drawbacks. The film is horribly edited, remarkably racist, witheringly misogynist, and paced without a single ounce of tempo. Idling around all of these incendiary feats of poor filmmaking is the looming boredom that comes from experiencing this vision of Costner’s third act as a Hollywood leading man. The movie is just as flat as could be. Lifeless is too spirited a word to use to describe this positively laconic drawl, which is far more akin to a 1990’s History Channel TV special than anything resembling a motion picture.

Sitting in the theater, easily the youngest person by about 30 years in my sparse audience, I had something of a crisis when trying to consider how I would even begin writing this review. Typically, I don’t think about the review writing process mid-viewing at all. Horizon, with its 3-hour runtime and almost dead first two hours (with the exception of a lengthy raid scene), gave me plenty of time and room to think about how to frame my feelings on the behemoth that an old man’s hubris wrought unto the American film scene. It’s not just that Horizon is a bad movie poorly made, it’s a film that, in accordance with its star’s most recent major work in television, feels as though it is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole in terms of form. To say ‘this could’ve/should’ve been a show’ is not only a lazy criticism, but rather trite in this era in which prestige television seems to have largely replaced the mid-budget adult drama. So yes, this very well may have made more sense as a TV show. However, I would say that I don’t believe that’s the only solution to Horizon’s problems. The multitude of storylines that would be discursive if there was enough connective tissue to tie them into a cohesive narrative could be better assembled and more thoughtfully constructed around a greater thematic ambition that is glanced at in the film, but so simultaneously hushed and forcefully shown that it nearly disappears from the text of the film at all.

Horizon isn’t just the name of the film, you see. No no, Costner (and his co-writers, Jon Baird and Mark Kasdan) are far too clever! These luminaries of the literary world use the title as a triple entendre, using it as the name for a falsely promised—but still being assembled through hope and necessity—settlement, as well as being a reference to the sweeping vistas for which the Western genre is renown. The third use in this tour-de-force of lyrical composition is its symbolic nature: that which is ever in front of you, but can never truly be reached. There is no meeting the horizon, only ever chasing after it. It may exist, but it is, by its nature, unreachable.

The multiple threads which Costner is pulling at are the disparate types of unsettled souls looking to find their own corner of the world to build a home around. Horizon is meant to be that salvation, but its sand has already been salted by the blood of those who came to survey it in the first place. After the threat of their deaths goes unheeded, a proper town emerges on the opposite side of the riverbank as the initial surveyors’ graves; an ominous reminder of the sacrifice of those who came first. It is now four years since the surveyors were laid to rest by the local Natives of the area, and the burgeoning town poses an even greater threat to the Natives’ way of life. A subset of Apache tribesmen indiscriminately attacks the town, killing every man, woman, and child they can lay their sights on. Some survivors form one of the plotlines that runs through the film; a roaming gang of bandits who take to scalping natives for sport and profit. Two of the other survivors, the mother-and-daughter duo lovingly referred to as ‘the ladies Kittredge’—mother Frances (Sienna Miller) and daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail)—stay at the nearby Army outpost, Camp Gallant—kept company by the gruff, but avuncular, Sgt Major Riordan (Michael Rooker) and the dashing, haunted Lt Gephardt (Sam Worthington). How long are these women in this camp? There is no way one could possibly know. The only clue is the budding romance between Frances and Gephardt; a flirtation that is unsurprising given the formulaic construction of the story, but is still distasteful in its view of women’s role in the Old West as well as how recently Frances’ husband and son were murdered defending her and her daughter.

Women in this film are below objectified (which would require a camera to at least look at them with some degree of attention and lust). Instead, they are merely elements of plot. No sense of heroism or strength beyond one moment of bravery that we are served without context in its moment and only shown its courage far later; which of course rears its head as the only death in the film that may bear some actual consequences. Horizon manages to come up shy of 1969’s True Grit in its displays of the resourcefulness, nuance, and strength of the women of the West. Each woman in the film is there for the enrichment of the nearest man’s story. They are not people, they are fodder for shootouts and brawls.

The attack on old Horizon, now a pile of ash and rubble, a dream that didn’t live long enough to be burned into the memory of a new day, was orchestrated by Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) of a nearby Apache tribe. Pionsenay sees the hazard of the incoming white folk and is experiencing first-hand how the ecological balance of the Apache way of life is being altered for the worse; and how there is no shining horizon for his people, should this stampede over their home be continued by any bright-eyed reinforcements. He has a confrontation with the tribe leader, Tuayeseh (Gregory Cruz), who does not approve of Pionsenay’s extreme methods, believing that the attacks will not stop the inevitable arrival of more migrant whites.

It is a plainly offensive scene that is shot with the bias of a stern disapproval of Pionsenay and takes a virtuous view of Tuayeseh and his ‘peaceful’ ways. While there are still three more parts of this epic tale coming (so this may well change in future installments), the perspective Costner takes to this discussion is a strong political position that paints the Natives as operating on either end of a pole of extremes: vicious and ignorant. Pionsenay’s portrayal as a radical run sick with bloodlust ignores that he is, historically speaking, correct. The incoming white settlers reeked mayhem upon the local Native populations and created major downstream effects on the natural ecology. While his violent means may be disagreeable, his position is certainly the one that history bears as being the most rational line of thinking, yet he is shown as cruel and morally wrong. Tuayeseh’s subdued and nearly dejected view of the incoming whites as an unstoppable reality is, then, essentially saying that he, too, is a believer in Manifest Destiny, just not from a positive perspective. What is left for the Apache to do, then, if fighting is off the table and negotiation seems to be out of the cards? Nothing, apparently, which is a distinctly modern, white, conservative opinion. This is seen today in the politics of the past few years, specifically as seen in the conservative reaction to protesting and its justness. Costner has long been one to insert his politics into his films, and it is easy to discern that he believes himself to be some kind of ‘intellectual libertarian’ or other such third-party supporter; but this scene’s inclusion and how it shades his view on the conflict at the heart of this story is his most pathetic and ill-considered political statement yet.

Trying to adequately describe this film in any way that is cohesive and, as I at least try to make these, interesting, is a task I may well not be able to achieve. The elements that are being setup are too disparate in nature to weave our way through without choppily moving from one to the other, much as the film is edited. This is the reason why the film does feel so much like a TV show. The editing style is utilitarian, not dramatic. The scenes do not glide together in order to shape a smooth narrative form, honing myriad miscellaneous storylines into a common dramatic core. Rather, they are broken up at seemingly ‘logical’ stopping points in order to move to the next story in the rotation so that no one plot line chews up too much continuous screentime. It’s a style of editing that befits commercial breaks, which is how this film will likely mostly be seen a few years down the road. The theater may as well have added the TNT logo to the bottom corner and sporadically inserted a lower-third graphic detailing when reruns of NCIS: New Orleans would next be on.

The film’s lack of inertia is much the same as that of the third episode of a 10-episode TV show does not pretend that an operatic conclusion is soon to come. However, in the world of TV, this is not a failing. A show that pretends as though it will be wrapping up earlier in the season than the show is meant to run is a show that is trying to falsely affect tension that the showrunners are unable to earn through skill or talent. Conversely, not only does avoiding this conclusive feeling not befit the medium of film (which relies upon the structure which dictates an ending involving some sort of emotional catharsis or otherwise thoughtful point of contemplation), but further has no precedent in film as it is wholly unjustified. The Lord of the Rings series concludes each installment at a point of heightened dramatics, as does each Godfather installment, every Rocky movie, and every single film series ever seen by human eyes. Horizon, in a decision that is more insulting than foolish, concludes on a lengthy highlight reel of what’s to come in the following chapter. It is a cheap, cloying plea in the form of in-film marketing which would be more loathsome if it wasn’t already so desperate as to be pathetic.

The other stories at play are as such: Ellen Harvey (Jena Malone) has shot her father, James Sykes (Charles Halford) in Montana and fled south with her infant son, taking up with the innocent, kind, but poor Walter Childs (Michael Angarano). The two share their home with a local independent prostitute, Marigold (Abbey Lee), who runs into a travelling horse trader named Hayes Ellison (Kevin Costner) and propositions him for a trick while she’s watching Ellen’s baby. Meanwhile, the sons of James Sykes, Caleb and Junior (Jamie Campbell Bower and Jon Beavers, respectively) are trying to track Ellen down to reclaim their stolen brother and enact vengeance. This, of course, ends up ensnaring Marigold and Hayes into this web of trouble which sends the whole affair sideways. Thankfully, for keeping abreast to this delightful series of twists and turns, we are gifted one of the most confounding, woefully conceived, staged, and shot sex scenes I have ever seen in a film. The Room had a more palatable and coherent view on the nature of sex. Elsewhere, a wagon train treks across American desert en route to bring more settlers to Horizon. Within this train is a pair of fussy Brits who just can’t seem to fit in! As they approach their toughest stretch of waterless expanse, Native scouts lurk in the mountainside, forewarning of the dangers to come.

What are all of these characters hurtling towards? The true Manifest Destiny, one could argue. But what is Manifest Destiny in the world of Kevin Costner? It’s a threat of violence, a collision of misguided ambitions and self-preservation from multiple perspectives. Additionally, it’s the hope of a new tomorrow, but only for those coming to the area. What it means for those who have lived their entire lives there, it’s a great uncertainty that looms large, but can’t be made out with clarity what the outcomes of its presence may be. My takeaway from the film is that Costner has no grand view of what Manifest Destiny is, or what it has resulted in. I believe that he sees it completely ahistorically, an event which exists in a vacuum; simply something which had happened to which a name has been assigned. There is no perspective to his consideration, no thought as to how Manifest Destiny was an invention of self-aggrandizement packaged as a bill of goods. Horizon the town is clearly shown to be a falsehood, that’s all well and good, but his representation of the immutability of the white American spirit is at odds with the vaguely derelict, profit-driven big-wigs back in the big cities, with their nicely starched collars and fancy printing press. He is not making the statement that Manifest Destiny is actually non-existent, instead a manufactured unreality for the use of war mongering profiteers; he is saying that the phenomenon existed on its own, and that the only sin is the exploitation of the settler’s nature by those with enough resources to churn out some decorative paper. Additionally, he has no consideration for how Manifest Destiny has shaped our nation, failing to take the opportunity to use the perspective of history to better paint the events of this era. His characters are all fleeing a fear; people whose unfortunate circumstances are meant to be pitied and related to, thereby justifying their (presumed) eventual union at the next iteration of the town of Horizon. However, that is no longer Manifest Destiny. He has lost the idea of the movement as a metaphor. It is now a device of convenience, something to which he can pin a plot that contains enough shorthand cultural understanding that he can gamble that his audiences will have without having to develop his thoughts into something sincere and compelling.

It's clear that Costner wanted this to be his epic, a combination of John Ford’s The Searchers and Robert Altman’s Nashville told at the scale of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s hard to imagine a worse way for this film to have been created, which highlights not only how lofty this ambition is, but how terribly Costner is suited to the very nature of storytelling, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering this is his first feature film credit over the course of his 40-years Hollywood career. Curiously, though, you can see his influence in the types of roles he has chosen over the years, which are a clear indication of where his heart lies in regards to his views on the American spirit and the importance of a type of national spirituality. That is essentially the ethos behind Field of Dreams, whose famous line, ‘if you build it, they will come’ funnily enough works well for Horizon in all the worst ways. Horizon does not lie in the heart of a poet, but that of a National Geographic-loving dad who thinks he understands the West based on a combination of pulp novels and TV specials. It would be a churlish and cruel view of the era if it were more smartly constructed. While floundering to be more than a midday programmer, the film still manages to be insipid and obnoxious, all in one go. There may be nine more hours of this rebarbative vision to go, though I struggle to imagine that a theater seat is where anyone will be able to watch it by the time the final credits roll on whatever sunset Costner thinks may be meaningful.