Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 is the latest from actor/producer/director Kevin Costner, who cowrote with John Baird and Mark (Silverado) Kasden. It captures the sprawling terrain of John Ford/Henry Hathaway/George Marshall's How the West Was Won and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, set for the long haul in a pre-and-post Civil War America, which spans from Wyoming to Kansas during a twelve-year span.
The tiered format works like a gritty soap opera in its episodic, Wagon Train start, holding interlocking segments, with the following, supporting individuals segueing into various moments: Abby Lee's Marigold; Sienna Miller's Frances Kittredge; Georgia MacPhail's Lizzie Kittredge; Will Patton's Owen Kittredge; Sam Worthington's Lt. Trent Gephart; Michael Rooker's Sgt. Major Thomas Riodan; Owen Crow Shoe's Pionesay; Jena Malone's Ellen Harvey; Danny Houston's Col. Albert Houghton; Jeff Fahey's "Tracker"; Tom Payne's Hugh Proctor; among an inexhaustible host of others. (Horizon isn't considered an epic without good cause; its hearty cast only reinforces its reputation.)
Costner's Hayes Ellison arrives an hour into the monumental chapter, a saddle-tramp/businessman, who gets involved in a family dispute he didn't foresee. The situation brings out his alpha/sigma traits, as he's a man who doesn't back down from trouble and is willing to help others. In this respect, he's like Alan Ladd's Shane of George Steven's movie of the same name: aloof, autonomous and brave enough to slug it out.
Luke Wilson's Matthew Van Weyden helps keep the peace, as well. His presence is as palpable as Ellison's, as he grants a comparable, shrewd and paternal patience in what unfolds during his wagon-train segment.
The story's standout antagonist is Jamie Campbell (Stranger Things) Bowers' Caleb Sykes, a sneering, Northern Territory frontiersman, who along with his domineering family members, wants comeuppance for an attack that left his father incapacitated. For the second phase of the movie, his bloodthirsty motivation prophesizes the saga's mounting tensions and drives home that Shane element all the further, with Sykes being comparable to Jack Palance's steely gunslinger, Jack Wilson, only much more taunting and erratic.
This antagonistic strand continues throughout the picture, though it's most unsettling episode isn't Sykes-prompted. It occurs when a band of Apaches burns down the fledgling, Horizon community. The sequence is vivid and frightening, perceived as an act of vengeful survival by its perpetrators and one that'll leave audiences impacted long after it ends, though does it ever truly end? Even after the dust clears, the slaughter ebbs and flows within the adventure's related portions.
There's also a ensnaring consistency to the movie's look, thanks in large part to cinematographer, J. Michael (Titanic 1997) Muro. John (The Passion of the Christ) Debny's score enlivens Muro's photography, which though not as expansive as the Cinerama range of How the West Was Won, still invokes an evocative, old-school naturalness that Costner fans will recognize from Dances with Wolves, Open Range, Wyatt Earp and The Postman.
Horizon has already gained criticism (and this has come even among those who haven't yet seen it) for not taking decisive sides in its depicted conflicts, namely what occurs between the settlers and the Native Americans. Even so, the content defines that which is bad, no matter who or what side commits it. This allows Horizon to be an objective, historical piece of fiction, based on the documented accounts of the period, thus presenting a painstaking dramatization of how the U.S. grew and strengthened.
I've no doubt that Part 2 will bring much the same worthy, equivocal additives (and no doubt come nearer to the Civil War). For such, I'm most anxious to experience it.
Horizon: An American Sage - Chapter 2 hits theaters this August.
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