Film Review — Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1
Kevin Costner’s epic western doesn’t work as a standalone film, but as a serial opener, it proves more absorbing than some critics claim
If you go to Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1 with the understanding that it is the opening salvo in a four-part serial (Chapter 2 is out next month), then there is much to enjoy. Some critics have been sniffy — unfairly, in my view. Yes, this doesn’t work as a standalone film, but neither did The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), and no one thought any the less of that. If handsomely mounted, old-fashioned epic westerns are your thing, there’s little to dislike.
Kevin Costner directs at an unhurried pace, but that doesn’t mean the narrative is uninteresting. It involves three primary strands that don’t yet intersect (again, I emphasise this is part one of four). Ultimately, one expects these will converge in the titular settlement, in which white pioneers have purchased plots of land. However, the Apache are less than happy about this encroachment in their country.
This results in an opening massacre. The homesteader survivors, including Frances (Sienna Miller), are later assisted by a group of Yankee cavalry. These troops are led by the thoroughly decent…
