Kevin Costner in Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter 1

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA
Directed by Kevion Costner
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

A THREE-HOUR, multi-part jumble of tales set in 1860s America has plots about as well-mapped-out as the virgin territory Kevin Costner’s motley crew of settlers rely on.

Horizon is the first of a four-part epic in which Costner aims to tell the story of a 12-year period, with the Civil War at its heart. Perhaps he hopes to explain a key moment in the development of the modern USA. It is a big ask, and one that might become clearer when part two is out.

His story focuses on a series of seemingly unconnected tales.

We start at the settlement of Horizon, soon destroyed by Apaches. Survivors Frances Kittredge (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Lizzy (Georgia MacPhail) are taken under the protection of the US Army, leading to an undercooked romance with Officer Gephardt (Sam Worthington).

We meet a wagon trail led by Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), and learn that some of the settlers are horrible, others are English wimps, and all are in danger.

Then we head to Montana, where abused woman Ellen (Jena Malone) takes a shotgun to a sleeping man and flees with her infant, prompting her victim’s family to set out to hunt her down. Costner appears as mysterious figure Hayes Ellison, who has a heroic role to play, but quite why has yet to be explained. Other asides abound, but how this all will come together has been left for future instalments.

The reason for watching is purely aesthetic, the same reason you may head to an art gallery. Costner has made a film where the look is the saving grace. One scene set in autumn in a silver birch forest is so beautiful to be other worldly. Costner manages to capture through the camera the sense of awe settlers must have felt. But pretty sights, lovely clothes and beautiful horses are undermined by a hotch-potch story.

Costner calls it a saga, as if to warn us that it is going to take some commitment from the viewer. But it doesn’t make the three hours spent watching this first chapter any more satisfying to think you might get a pay-off somewhere later.