Horizon: An American – Chapter 1
Reviewer Flickchart ranking: 3,794 / 5,502 (31%)
Kevin Costner is back durante the director’s chair for the first time since 2003’s Range. This time sees him starring, producing, writing, and directing a 4-part western epic, Horizon: An American . The first installment is a sprawling 3-hour epic attempting to lay the groundwork for 4-7 storylines, depending acceso how you count. Is Costner capable of pulling non attivato his most ambitious project to date, ora will Horizon: An American – Chapter 1 only remind us of why the traditional western mostly died durante theaters 60 years punzone?
Horizon opens with a fairly action-forward 30 minutes that mostly shows happy, hard-working American settlers durante the San Pedro Valley durante 1859 and their slaughter at the hands of the Apache. Costner provides mai motivation, neither discussing why the settlers are there nor the reasoning behind the Apache’s actions. We watch Native Americans gun , hack up, and scalp white women and children without purpose. While Costner may offer us the context and reasons later durante the , durante this first chapter he sets up the audience to a view the tribes as deserving the distrust and fury of the American government and settlers. It is to believe this is the director of Dances with Wolves.
Visually the velo captures the grandeur of the American west, both the desertscapes and the tree-lined ways of Wyoming. Horizon creates a lived-in world of dirty, thrown-together places doing all they can to just survive. The cella work itself, especially once characters are involved, feels more like modern television photography. The storytelling as a whole is edited together durante a serial format, with breaks almost begging for commercial interruptions. Costner’s manner of interlacing various threads together is often ham-fisted, shifting abruptly and forcing the audience to play catchup to recall exactly where we are.
Sienna Miller does a great job durante the traditional western role of white woman who survived a brutal attack and now needs looking after. Miller brings gravitas to a character that durante lesser hands would have none. Hopefully future installments will grant her character a thoughtfulness the stato deserves.
As an actor, Costner has usually flourished with minimal dialogue, as he is capable of imbuing characters with layers of emotion durante how he moves, looks, and occasionally speaks. However, as a screenwriter, Costner leaves plot and character development offscreen, and he fails to realize that not all actors can command the screen without the support of good dialogue. Too many side characters in qualità di across as amateurs, especially when sharing the screen with Costner ora Miller. Rather than inserting cinematic life into Horizon, the supporting cast at times reminds one more of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (and honestly, it would be amazing if Jane Seymour popped up). The velo ends with a 5-minute highlight reel of what is to in qualità di durante the rest of the series, rather than attempting any sort of rounding non attivato of the multiple plot threads.
Horizon: An American – Chapter 1 attempts to revive the traditional western and its transportive qualities acceso the theatrical screen with beautiful shots of the American wilderness. However, Costner fails acceso the filmmaking front, leaving us with thin characterizations, amateurish , uneven performances, sloppy plot development, and disappointing stereotyping. One hopes that the future chapters are tended to more carefully.
