Against all odds, Kevin Costner has premiered another chapter of Horizon: An American Saga, his epic passion project western that spans 15 years (and almost as many plotlines) of settling the American West. Initially slated for an August theatrical release, Chapter 2 was pulled from theaters after the box office failure of Chapter 1 in June, and while he still doesn’t have financing to finish Chapter 3 or start Chapter 4, Costner – who stars in, directs, co-writes, and produces the saga – keeps going.
In Chapter 2, we begin to see how every storyline will end up in the settlement of Horizon, where things are starting to look slightly less miserable – dare I say liveable. It would take a novel to cover the plot, but most of the storylines continue cleanly from the first film, albeit with different focal characters.
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Sienna Miller and Georgia MacPhail lead the Horizon segment while Sam Worthington is out (not dead, just gone). Will Patton and Isabelle Fuhrman, along with Ella Hunt and Douglas Smith, take over the wagon caravan segment in dual storylines, with Luke Wilson relegated to the fringes. Giovanni Ribisi comes in like a bookend, opening and closing the film as its near-mythological Mr. Pickering, the soon-to-be villain that Costner has explained will “dominate” chapters three and four.
Chinese settlers have also entered the picture – showcasing the longevity of the country’s diversity – bringing a sawmill, a peaceful attitude, and some much-needed economic resourcefulness to Horizon. Meanwhile, Hayes Ellison (Costner) – wearing two black belts with big silver buckles, high-waisted trousers, thin suspenders, and a ten-gallon hat, six-shooter strapped to his side – stays similarly relevant. He’s one of the few who hasn’t arrived in Horizon by the end, busy manning the sheriff’s department in a little ranching settlement of rabble-rousers and fools.
Similarities also abound between the two chapters: the three-hour runtime (plus ten minutes this time!), the 30-minute delayed entry of Costner’s introduction, his stone-cold badassery, the plethora of TV actors filling out the cast, and the episodic feel. As in the first, White Mountain Native Americans loom over Horizon on the peaks of cliffs watching their land fill up. One gets the sense that Costner is building a war chest of expectation out of their presence, a huge battle or, perhaps, a depiction of the systematic displacement and erasure of western Natives in tow in subsequent chapters.
Costner has no interest in shying away from the atrocities of the time. Where Chapter 1 honed in on the few good-hearted boys that settled the American West, Chapter 2 shifts gears, focusing on the primal, invidious and survivalist nature of frontier America. Death, brutality, and sexual violence run rampant – a major tenet of the lawless time and place.
Where the first ended with a rousing sizzle reel that hyped up the second, the second’s sizzle reel is nearly unintelligible, a glaring display of the reality that Costner hasn’t found enough money or public interest to warrant the following two chapters. He hopes to shoot them back-to-back next spring, but the momentum seems to be fading. Chapter 2 could be the nudge audiences need to get into it, but for the time being it remains in release limbo.
For all its ambition and likeability, Chapter 2 often plays like prestige TV (that wouldn’t win awards). The rush with which it’s been made spills from the seams in the form of shoddily rehearsed dialogue, inexplicable plot holes to boot, a primetime television tone, and a pressure-cooked edit. But it’s thoroughly enjoyable TV at least, and if you ever get the chance to see it on the big screen, the landscapes are magnificent, the scope more grand, and the mood much more cinematic.
