Review of HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA, CHAPTER 1: Land of Loss and Lamentation

June 28, 2024

In 1859, land beside the river in the San Pedro Valley were being sold to people who wanted to make a community out west, calling the new settlement Horizon. Because this area was in the territory of the Apache tribe, tragic misfortune befell the first white men who surveyed the area. In 1863, a big group of folk who bought land in Horizon saw the crosses on one bank of the river, and decided to settle down on the other side. 

That night, the Apache led by Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) came down to violently claim what was theirs. Many settlers were killed, as their houses were razed down to the ground. Answering a call for help, troops from the nearest army outpost led by Lt. Trent Gephard (Sam Worthington) arrived to clean up the massacre site. Among the survivors was Mrs. Frances Ketteridge (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Lizzie (Georgia McPhail). 

The main driving force behind this ambitious project is producer, director, co-writer and actor Kevin Costner. When he called "Horizon" a saga, he was not exaggerating. This 3 hour-long film I watched is only the Part 1 of 4 parts. Part 2 will be released August 16, 2024. The release dates of Chapters 3 and 4 have yet to be announced. Therefore, when you watch this, don't be surprised if the story feels incomplete, because there really is more to come.   

I have to confess that I was overwhelmed by the number of individual threads involving multiple characters, both white and Native American, being told in here. Costner's character Hayes Ellison does not even appear until after the first hour. Only upon his arrival do we meet other important characters like Marigold (Abbey Lee), Ellen Harvey (Jena Malone), and the bully Syke brothers, Junior (Jon Beavers) and Caleb (Jamie Campbell Bowers). 

From those artistic shots in the opening scene of men surveying the land, the majestic expansive beauty of the American West was beautifully captured in every scene by cinematographer J. Michael Muro, accompanied by the music by John Debney. It was clear that this is a passion project of Costner, telling a blood-stained story of socio-cultural conflict between white migrants and Native Americans in the wild West of the mid-1800s. 7/10.