Review: Kevin Costner’s outdated western ‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1′ disappoints

Kevin Costner’s new western epic “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1″ is the kind of film that prompts the question, “How did this get made?” But we already know, because part of the film’s lore is that producer/director/star/co-writer Costner staked the funding himself, at great personal risk.

In order to devote himself to the four-part “Horizon: An American Saga,” the Oscar-winning director and star of the 1990 western epic “Dances With Wolves” walked away from the blockbuster television series “Yellowstone” and put up his own property to self-fund this Civil War-era yarn.

What unfolds on screen over the course of three hours and one minute in “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1″ can only be described as a massive boondoggle, a misguided and excruciatingly tedious cinematic experience. That Costner has promised three more installments feels like a threat.

There is a distinctly retro feel to this project, and not in a classic, old-fashioned way, but rather, in a dated, out-of-touch way, in the storytelling and the style.

Co-written with Jon Baird and Mark Kasdan, the script weaves together several disparate story lines set largely in 1863. By the end, we’ll come to understand that all roads lead to Horizon, a patch of cursed land that’s been heavily advertised to pioneers even though the Apache tribe has kept the land clear of anything other than the grave markers of white settlers for years.

In an early action sequence, Apache warriors attack a dance in the Horizon tent city that plays like a right-wing fever dream, where guns are salvation against the faceless Indigenous other. Costner does later take us into the Apache tribe, where there’s a scene of an elder leader warning the young warriors that the settlers will keep coming, and we do eventually witness retaliatory white violence on the Apache. Perhaps we’ll see more nuanced depictions of Native American life in future installments, but for now, the representations are problematically broad and seemingly perfunctory.

In the wake of this attack, the widowed Mrs. Kittredge (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail) are taken to the closest Army camp by Union soldiers, where the two women discover growing affection for their saviors, including Trent Gephart (Sam Worthington).

Elsewhere, the Sykes brothers from a Montana Territory family seek revenge on a young woman, Ellen (Jena Malone), who shot their father. She’s settled in a tiny village in Wyoming Territory with an enterprising sex worker, Marigold (Abbey Lee), but can’t outrun her past. Marigold seduces horse trader Hayes Ellison (Costner) but the two have to go on the lam after a run-in with one of the evil Sykes brothers (Jamie Campbell Bower). A wagon train, led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), makes its way toward Horizon, battling the elements and each other, and there’s also a band of Apache hunters hoping to turn Native scalps into commerce.

All of these story lines are cut together haphazardly and unevenly. There are random time jumps and scenes go on for too long or otherwise reveal themselves to be pointless. Instead of one narrative arc deeply explored, we’re stuck hopping between disparate story lines, never caring or understanding much about anyone beyond the surface level.

This 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 stars out of 4

Rated: R for violence, some nudity and sexuality.

Where: In theaters.