Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Look I'll be the first to admit I groaned and rolled my eyes at everyone in the theaters at the end of The Fellowship of the Rings when a few morons said out loud "wait that's it?!?" At the end of the 1st of 3 movies.... But, in the case of this movie (which I understand is just Chapter 1 with Chapter 2 in the eves) wait that's it?

I just watched a 3 hour movie, with 15 main characters, and 30 subplots. Each of which got 25 minutes? It just felt incredibly disjointed. The weird spoiler-y preview at the end was spoiler-y as hell. I feel like this would have been a great mini-series, but in this convoluted fashion it fell flat for me.

It was beautifully shot. And was fun to watch visually, but I have no idea about any of the characters, they history, reason for being. It just drops you in the middle of each journey and it genuinely feels like I missed and entire movie before this. Maybe Chapter 2 will solidify some stuff, but that is a stupid way to do things.

I was really looking forward to this movie with a great cast. Finally some real Costner cinema and some good old western action.

Well, I was dissapointed. Yes the filming is great. Beautiful locations. Casting is spot on and the characters look amazing. Real nice.

But. This movie was all over the place. The characters skipped years in one scene and were back in another. The editting is done so terribly that I didnt understand any of the timeline at some point. There are so many flaws like that in this movie that it gets annoying.

Also there are about 4 or 5 different stories n the movie and that doesnt help. The one time you are looking at a hooker with some kid, and the next screne you are in a whole different place where some guys hunt indians.

Costner obviously plays the silent string type who has a sixth sense for danger as he always does. But thats ok. I just hope part 2 will be more coherent.

Landscape scenery is amazing! High expectations for Horizon and it starts out disjointed. Trying sew the stories together made it hard to follow.

Storylines are many making it even harder to follow. In time I believe they will come together.

Some time wasted on dialogue and the initial native raid scene.

The clash of two worlds and the splitting of the native world (apache) was very well written. Use of native american actors (speaking native tongue)is awesome.

The US Army parts felt a little too modern. The use of the word "indigenous" just did not sound right for that time. Also we have never been shown US Army compassion from that time period before.

The playful addition of African Americans seems very modern as well. No doubt they were there but living harmoniously with whites is hard to believe.

I will check out the next chapter and I hope the story continues to develop.

It's not bad. It's just disjointed. It fails on a lot of levels. I think many people will enjoy it. I personally felt disappointment as I was hoping for a cinematic epic western. It felt like it belonged on tv as a miniseries in the late 90's. As much as people say there were cinematic shots, I didn't see anything that gave me that vibe. Medium shot after medium shot. This will be just as enjoyable on your home tv and you won't miss the big screen as much as say Dune or Oppenheimer. The characters. So. Many. Characters. We get barely any character development. Lots of great actors yes, but they are thrown at you left and right. It is also clear that there is probably 3 hours of deleted scenes. So many things happen with zero context. Characters fall in love out of nowhere. They wind up together out of nowhere. They cry for other characters out of nowhere. Characters show up out of nowhere. Who's a protagonist? Who's an antagonist? Some of the characters are over the top and fun, reminding me of classic western characters, but they feel silly here. The music is...fine....nothing really moving though, it's just there. It also feels too clean. Like either everyone is in very new costumes and clean and air conditioned or they are really really dirty, but nowhere in between. Remember when everyone was shiny from sweat and real flies flew around on screen? Early on I just kept thinking...something is off. Then there's the end. It's Part 1, but instead of a cliffhanger and a "to be continued" we cut straight into the longest montage of cut scenes from the next movie(s) showing way too much...for a movie we barely have to wait for. It comes out in 2 months. All that said, I'm invested in the story and I want to see how it unfolds. There is a good story and good characters here, but this would have been much better as a series on streaming where they could take time with everything. 6/10. (Like Dune, maybe Part 2 will change my rating)

The good: -Great cinematography and use of scenery.

-Good suspense and action in the first half- hour.

-Good film score to compliment the scenes.

-Not sugar coating or politicizing the conflict with the Native Americans.

The bad: -Juggling different storylines doesn't see to be Kevin Costner's strong point. The script was all over the place. I wasn't sure what the montage at the end of the movie was trying to accomplish. It seemed to appear all of a sudden and, just like the script, jumped all over the place. Was I being shown a flash forward? A preview of the upcoming movies? It just seemed really pasted together.

-Kevin Costner seems to have jumped ship from Yellowstone to work on the epic set of films and in doing so, seems to be trying to "one up" Taylor Sheridan's series 1883 and 1923. Not sure what Kevin Costner needs to prove, but it seems like with this set of films, he's trying to prove himself to be the better story teller. In my opinion he's no better or worse than T. S. but leaving a T. V. series where you're a major character with major loose ends to tie up just to create a similar project smells a tad bit petty. This film almost seems like K. C. has bit off more than he can chew. This is not the way to engage theatre goers to invest in a four set of three hour films.