After much promotion and hype, Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 has come and gone, in like a lion and out like a lamb. What looked like one of 2024’s summer blockbuster hits, the first of a planned four-part series, fizzled and died right before everyone’s very eyes.
It was a movie that cost an estimated $50 million-- $100 million if you included the production costs of the second installment which was scheduled to hit theaters in early August. Reportedly, the money largely came from Kevin Costner himself, hot off the dizzying success of Yellowstone, who funded Horizon in addition to producing it, directing it and starring in it. It was a hell of a gamble, but Costner decided to fearlessly roll the dice.
The initial numbers are in, and they are not good. Despite Costner’s optimism about the ambitious, multi-part project and his aggressive marketing campaign, that included numerous appearances and interviews, the movie only managed to earn an opening $28.4 million worldwide, sending a shockwave through Hollywood prompting a postponement of the second installment.
The movie had received a lengthy standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. The French audience loved it, but then again, these are the people who regard Jerry Lewis as a national hero.
On a more serious note, it seemed that foreign audiences were able to relate to Horizon more than moviegoers here in America, which might seem odd since the movie was a sweeping love letter of sorts to America, one that embraced the good, the bad, and the ugly details of this nation’s pioneering past. Like Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990), Horizon was careful to try to tell the ugly truth about the westward expansion and the terrible treatment of this country’s indigenous population.
The story begins on that note, with settlers struggling to get a foothold on land that was fraudulently sold to them. Roughly the first hour of the movie is devoted to a savage attack at night by a Native American tribe. It is bloody and violent and drawn out in great detail. The massacre is followed by the arrival of the cavalry who bury the dead and offer safety to the survivors. It is one part of several sub-plots that comprise the sweeping saga of Horizon.
Reviews of the movie have taken it to task for the number of stories-within-the-story and the overabundance of characters. It’s an ambitious tale. One of the lessons learned in Hollywood in the silent era was that it was that attempting to pack too much into a film could have disastrous results. D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) is a towering example. It had no less than four major storylines and was a complete failure back in the age of silent film.
While audiences are more sophisticated in 2024, a movie like Horizon can push the limits. It runs just over three hours, which might be justifiable if the story was more engaging. It suffers from a sluggish pace that makes the movie feel longer than it is.
If Horizon somehow receives any Oscar nominations, Best Screenplay won’t be one of them. Nor will Best Editing. One would imagine that a movie with a run time like this would have the luxury of diving deep into the drama and characters but despite the movie’s length it still suffers from occasional leaps and bumps in the narrative.
What Horizon has going for it is a ton of atmosphere and ambiance. The unhurried approach allows the audience to really take it all in, in the way of the scenery, wardrobe and props. The decision to include lengthy scenes and rambling dialog is a creative choice that either works or it doesn’t. It’s a matter of taste.
To its credit, it’s not a bad movie if you let go and drown in its laid-back approach. There are dramatic gems scattered throughout, but patience and trust are required.
Costner’s sweeping Horizon project begs the question of whether a Western epic like this should be presented in four feature film installments or whether perhaps it might be better presented as an eight or nine part streaming event on television. You would think that a decision like this would have been an obvious one for Kevin Costner and his recent mega-success with the multi-part Yellowstone series.
As it turns out, the four-part feature film concept for this project has encountered a major problem starting on its opening weekend, raising the question of how this labor of love might somehow be salvaged.
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