'Horizon' is streaming and is awesome
Why watch one western when you can watch the western that’s all the westerns?
The plan was a Horizon summer. “A Two-Part Theatrical Event,” the posters promised. Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 would arrive on June 28, with Chapter 2 only two months later. Kevin Costner — producer, director, co-writer, co-star — put up his own money for this magnum opus. The first film was three hours. Two more chapters were planned.
Chapter 1 flopped. Chapter 2 got delayed, with no new proper release date in sight. The unfinished Chapter 3 needs money fast. Chapter 4, who knows?
This whole insane doomed dream of Horizon is, in fact, the story of an insane doomed dream called Horizon. That’s the name of the town Out West which multiple characters circle in Chapter 1. The place is a false promise, located deep in Apache territory, advertised by men who’ve never been there. Two bloodbaths baptize the land in the first hour. Building the settlement is a suicidal act of madness — not to mention a robbery. Yet people keep trying.
So. Many. People. If you’ve seen the press photos of stars Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington looking way too pretty, know that they occupy just one small quadrant of Horizon’s vast space. The film begins with a couple prologues, which could be overlapping frontier origin myths. White men (and a boy) survey Indigenous land. The locals fight back. A wanderer arrives later, finding an empty place with nothing but possibility and corpses. After a passage of time (weeks or months can pass in a single edit), we see Horizon risen into a modest community. Then a large Apache attack scalds the population.
In the aftermath of that horrific battle, Horizon reveals its cleverness. The Cavalry arrives, and does not immediately set off to defeat the attackers. Quite the opposite. Worthington’s officer thinks the settlers are idiots, and advises the survivors to leave. Meanwhile, the massacre causes a deep rift within a local tribe, which is torn between sage elders (pacifists? cowards?) and young upstarts fighting Manifest Destiny.
There’s more, so much. Too much? I kind of love Horizon, and since it’s streaming on Max today, I recommend making a weekend out of it. The damned thing just doesn’t stop. I haven’t mentioned the great Jena Malone as a tough woman on the run from a powerful family, or the scalp hunters whose vengeance enters the unholy nexus of capitalism and terrorism. In the eastern distance, the Civil War splits the nation asunder. Midway through Chapter 1, we suddenly get thrown into a large wagon train, with seven or eight new key characters who split across class lines. Leading the wagons is a lonesome rider, taciturn and congenial, possessing a deep moral force — and he’s Luke Wilson!
By then, it’s clear that Costner isn’t just trying to make one western, but all westerns: A westward-ho expansionist adventure, a downbeat counter-legend, the horror of Apache attacks, the horror of American invasion, John Ford heroes, Peckinpah freaks, belles, matriarchs, snow, desert, forests, plains. Showdowns! Exciting showdowns; sorrowful showdowns. I haven’t been a Costner guy since I had Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves action figures, and I acknowledge his faults. A couple romances are WB-level soapy. Michael Rooker’s fake accent is inscrutable. But so many sequences build in unexpected directions. Costner’s approaching history from his own perspective, which you could criticize in various political directions. You feel fervently he's trying to encompass everything — every hero at least half a villain, every new world a graveyard.
Costner himself arrives an hour deep, playing the most Cowboy of cowboys. He rides into town on a horse, meets a hooker with a heart of gold: Very Destry Rides Again. And then Costner walks alongside another man, who he has never met, played by Jamie Campbell Bower. If you know Bower’s maniacs from Twilight, Harry Potter, Stranger Things, you know the actor’s here for murder-eyed weirdness. The two guys are obviously on a collision course. Their conversation lasts five minutes or more. At first, it’s endless. The longer they talk, though, the more the tension builds. Costner isn’t a stylist, but that scene leisurely achieves the eruptive bombast of a Sergio Leone duel. Meanwhile, he films landscapes with the careful attention of somebody who owns landscapes.
There’s no way he’ll ever finish this thing. Doing Horizon transformed Costner into one of his own unlucky characters, giving up so much for an impossible grand delusion. Chapter 1 doesn’t feel weighed down with purpose, though. It moves with whiplashing delight across its subplots. Will Chapter 2 accelerate this saga toward a coherent narrative, knotting all the different strands together, making Costner’s authorial aims clear? Maybe. The thing about a horizon is you will never ever reach it. But it sure is nice to look at.