Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kevin Costner
Starring: Kevin Costner, Abbey Lee, Jena Malone, Sienna Miller,
Sam Worthington, Michael Rooker, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jeff Fahey, Ella
Hunt
Once in a while a critic will have the cheek to publish a review despite
not having seen a movie in its entirety. "I've seen this a hundred times
before," is how they inevitably defend themselves when they're rightly
attacked for such a lack of professionalism and respect for the medium.
With Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One, Kevin Costner has forced all of his new film's
reviewers into the role of the unprofessional critic who forms an opinion
despite having only seen half a movie, or in this case maybe only a third,
or even a quarter. Costner's project is ambitiously spread across four
films, with three reportedly already shot and two guaranteed a release at
time of writing. Costner calls these movies "Chapters," but I don't think
he really understands what a chapter is. A "chapter" signifies a distinct
part of a story, with its own beginning, middle and end. Horizon's Chapter One has no discernible beginning or end, but it sure has a
whole lot of middle. It begins at a point that will have you wondering if the
projectionist has gotten the reels mixed up, and it ends on such a random
note that when a highlight reel of the second chapter begins unspooling it
takes a minute to realise the first film is over.
In terms of editing, Horizon is a confusing mess, structured in a way that suggests a wall of
Costner's mansion was once covered in post-it notes that were removed and
put back in random order by his cleaning lady. There are three distinct
storylines here and at this point it's impossible to tell if they're set
to intersect at some narrative junction in a subsequent chapter. If not,
you have to wonder why Costner didn't just make three separate films. I
suspect the answer is that it was easier for Costner to get one movie off
the ground and split it into four chapters than to forge ahead with three
individual movies. The haphazard manner in which Costner flips back and
forth between these three plot strands left me wondering if he was doing
something similar to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk with its three distinct timelines, but I came to the conclusion
that isn't the case. That the drama ranges from as far north as snowy
Wyoming to as far south as the New Mexico plains, and thus cuts between
snowfall and parched desert, doesn't help make things any easier. You
could tell me Chapter One plays out over a period of either a month or
five years and I wouldn't know which to believe. There are transitions
that are crying out for intertitles explaining how much time has passed,
and their odd absence might suggest Costner is being purposely
obfuscating, perhaps setting us up for a twist like that of TV's Westworld where it will turn out the three plotlines were actually playing
out in three separate time periods. Who knows? it certainly doesn't make
my job here any easier, that's for sure.
The story of the American West is a tale of deluded masses exploited by a
ruthless few, and the protagonists of westerns tend to be the men who
tried to forge a life between both parties. That's what Costner gives us
across his three plotlines here, which feature naive settlers, cut-throat
killers, stoic cavalry officers, Apaches forced to take brutal action
against the invaders of their land, and one man just trying to keep his
head down and avoid the arrows and bullets.
The first plotline sees widowed settler Frances (Sienna Miller)
and her young daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail) taken in by a
US cavalry outpost when her fellow settlers pay the price for pitching up
on Apache land. Despite having literally just lost her husband in a
violent manner that you assume would leave a woman emotionally scarred for
life, Frances shows remarkable fortitude and begins immediately setting
her sights on handsome officer Trent (Sam Worthington). This
segment sees Costner channel the Cavalry movies of John Ford, with
Worthington and Miller occupying the exact sort of roles that might have
been filled by John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, but it's missing the
sexually tense conflict that Ford brought to his film's romantic subplots,
and the watchable Miller struggles to generate any chemistry with the
stiff Worthington. If there are a further three movies to come, why is
Costner in such a rush to get these two people together? More convincing
is Michael Rooker in the Victor McLaglen role of the
gruff old Irish cavalryman with a heart of gold. His terrible Oirish
accent only endears him all the more to those western fans who understand
what he's doing with this role. That said, a cynical modern audience will
likely guffaw at the sentimentality here, especially a scene involving
Elizabeth cutting the roses from a blanket as a makeshift gift for
departing soldiers. But for me, the very casting against type of Rooker
sold this moment. Who knew Henry Lee Lucas was such a big softie?
This plotline branches off to its own subplot as some of the angry
survivors of the Apache massacre hire a group of bounty hunters led by the
legendary Jeff Fahey as a character so awful he makes
his Psycho III sleazebag seem like a fine young man by comparison. Like Wayne
in The Searchers, Fahey takes over his assignment and embarks on a bloody quest fuelled
by racist hatred. One of the film's more unsettling scenes sees him place
a pistol in the hands of a young white boy and attempt to coax the kid
into shooting an Apache accompanied by his own child. If the movie's
opening massacre of white settlers suggests a traditionally negative
portrayal of the Apache, Costner certainly balances things by how he
depicts the brutality of his film's white men. The Apache get their own
subplot too, centred around a philosophical disagreement between a chief
and his rebellious son (Owen Crow Shoe) over how to deal with the
threat of the white man.
The second plotline sees Costner put himself front and centre in a role
not unlike the one he played in his previous western, the great Open Range. He plays Hayes, a drifter who wanders from town to town taking up jobs
like The Fugitive's Richard Kimble. and as was so often the case with Kimble, he finds
trouble in the form of a woman, small town hooker Marigold (Abbey Lee). Marigold's connection to a woman (Jena Malone) on the run from
the brothers of her (possibly abusive?) husband leads Hayes to reluctantly
draw his gun once more and hit the hills with Marigold. The bickering pair
form a duo not unlike Clint Eastwood and Shirley Maclaine in Don
Siegel's Two Mules for Sister Sara, and the plotline draws inspiration from the revisionist and spaghetti
westerns of the '60s and '70s. There's a wonderful nod to Sergio
Corbucci's The Great Silence in the form of Caleb (Jamie Campbell Bower), an unhinged
psychopath whose look is clearly modelled on Klaus Kinski. An extended
scene that sees Caleb harass and provoke Hayes is the movie's highlight, the tension building with every muddy footstep as they trudge towards their fate, and Bower is terrifyingly sleazy in the
role. The part of Hayes fits Costner like a well broken-in pair of assless
chaps. The point when Hayes' mask of civilisation drops and he begins
gunsplainin' how things really work in the West and how shit's gonna go
down is the point when the movie really kicks in, and those of us who put
our faith in Costner are truly rewarded.
The final plotline follows a wagon trail of settlers guided by hired gun
Matthew (Luke Wilson), a grizzled military veteran who has little
time for anyone who might hold him up. This puts him in conflict with Hugh
(Tom Payne) and Juliette (Ella Hunt), a pair of young
English toffs who seem to be spending what appears to be a gap year taking
in the sights of the wild west, what ho. If Worthington was Ford's John
Wayne, Wilson is Howard Hawks' Wayne, and if you're familiar with Hawks
you'll have a sneaky suspicion that Matthew and Juliette's disdain for one
another disguises a buried lust that will no doubt blossom in future
chapters. A pair of creepy Scandinavians in Matthew's employ are set up as
potential villains as they set their beady eyes on Juliette's perfumed
soft skin. Introduced a full two hours into the running time, this
plotline is the one that makes the least amount of narrative headway, but
there's enough to suggest it will reap rewards down the line.
Horizon will likely hold as much appeal for a 21st century audience as a
Bix Beiderbecke comeback tour. An awful lot of people don't like Costner
(they're idiots), and an even larger group hate westerns (they're even
bigger fools). If you don't like westerns or Costner, this will prove a
torturous experience, and you'll know how I feel sitting through a Marvel
movie. This is a movie for old souls, for those of us who like nothing
more than to plonk down on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon and watch what
your dad would have referred to as "a good cowboy movie." Horizon is a bespoke Sunday afternoon oater, one that's long and rambling
enough that you won't miss too much plot if you succumb to a roast beef
coma for 20 minutes, but with enough loud gunshots to jolt you awake when
the yarn truly begins to let rip. Costner is working in a genre he clearly
adores here, and he's not afraid to risk alienating modern audiences by
leaning into some old-fashioned sentimentality; he practically loads a
six-shooter and places it in the hands of the cynic. He's the old
gunfighter whose reflexes may not be as quick as they once were, but he's
willing to risk getting shot down like a dog in the street. Like the aging
bandits of The Wild Bunch, he's got nothing to lose at this point. When Costner says "Let's go!"
most will reply "No thanks," but some of us will ask "Why not?" If this is
the last stand of this sort of epic American filmmaking, I'm all too happy
to go down in its hail of bullets. Regardless of where this trail leads,
it was a pleasure to ride alongside ol' Kev once more. I await the next
chapter with the eager and nervous anticipation of a desperado waiting for
a train.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One is on UK/ROI VOD now.
