Review: Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon: Chapter I’ shows Utah’s beauty and lots of Western spectacle

It’s a bit weird to critique director-star Kevin Costner’s Western epic “Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I,” because, as the last two words of the title suggest, we’re only getting a piece of it.

This sprawling three-hour movie, featuring more than two dozen significant speaking roles, is the first of two that Costner filmed across large parts of southern Utah last year — and he plans to make two more this year to finish the story. (Whether his distributor, Warner Bros./New Line Cinema, will pay for those two movies is a question that likely will be settled by this weekend’s box office.) So buckle in and saddle up, people, because we could be riding the range with Costner & Co. for a while.

What Costner puts on the screen in these first three hours is often impressive, and a reminder that — as he proved with his 1990 Oscar winner “Dances With Wolves” and his last directing effort, 2003′s “Open Range” — there are few filmmakers alive who intuitively understand the iconography of the Hollywood Western like he does. Here, Costner stages ferocious gun battles, thrilling chases on horseback, a bookended pair of massacres, and enough beauty shots of Utah’s wide-open landscapes to satisfy any movie lover.

Where Costner lacks control is in the narrative. He’s determined to not just tell a Western story but THE Western story — with gunslingers, outlaws, Apaches, wagon trains, Cavalry soldiers, a kind-hearted prostitute, prospectors and plucky settlers. If there’s a trope that’s ever been in a Western, it’s in this one, and Costner and co-screenwriter Jon Baird will insist that audiences spend some time with each of them.

“Chapter I” starts with settlers trying to claim small parcels of land in the San Pedro Valley (in what’s now Arizona) in 1858. The first ones are killed by Apaches, who believe the “white-eyes” are encroaching on sacred territory. Then more settlers come, all holding fliers printed by some East Coast entrepreneur promising a new town called Horizon — which the new arrivals build themselves.

The Apaches come back, and Costner stages the first of those two massacres. It’s a breathtaking bit of moviemaking, cutting between wide shots of the town burning and intimate action of the battle within one homesteader’s house. There are few survivors, but they include that homesteader’s wife and daughter, Frances and Lizzie Kittredge, played by Sienna Miller and newcomer Georgia MacPhail.

A Cavalry unit arrives too late to save the town, so the soldiers — led by Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) — escort Frances, Lizzie and other survivors to a nearby fort. After a suitable period of grieving, Frances begins a tentative courtship with Lt. Gephart.

Some of the Horizon locals, led by Elias Janney (Scott Haze), decide to pursue the Apaches who attacked the town. They team up with some bounty hunters — led by a tracker (Jeff Fahey) — who are willing to kill any Indigenous people they come across. (Costner includes some effective scenes of Indigenous people, speaking in their own language and subtitled in English, arguing about the wisdom of attacking the settlement and predicting a bleak future for the Apaches as more whites come.)

It’s an hour into the movie before Costner himself rides into the frame. He plays Hayes Ellison, whose past is rather murky, though we quickly catch on that he’s a gunfighter who has survived out West by being a quick shot, a quiet voice and a generally solitary figure — in other words, a prototypical Costner character.

So it’s a surprise when Ellison lands in one hardscrabble town and accepts an offer from Marigold (Abbey Lee) for an evening of comfort. On his way to visit Marigold, though, Ellison ends up in a gun battle with a talkative lowlife, Caleb Sykes (Jamie Campbell Bower), and goes on the run with Marigold and a two-year-old in tow. The mother of that toddler, Ellen Harvey (Jena Malone), is someone we’ve seen earlier in the story, escaping the nasty Sykes family in Montana.

Meanwhile, a wagon train is heading toward Horizon with more settlers. The train boss, Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), tries to maintain order — and finds himself having to deal with a snooty English couple (Ella Hunt and Tom Payne) who treat Van Weyden’s right-hand man, Owen Kittredge (Tom Patton), and his hard-working daughters like the hired help. (Whether Patton’s character is related to Miller’s is a plot point presumably to be revealed in a later chapter.)

Costner could have taken nearly any one of these big characters — particularly his own, or Miller’s resourceful widow, or Michael Rooker’s gruff Army sergeant — and built a dynamic standalone movie around them. The fact that he wants to tell all of their stories smacks of hubris, especially when he ends “Chapter I” with a five-minute montage of what we’re likely to see in the next three chapters, including some actors we haven’t seen yet (including Giovanni Ribisi and Kathleen Quinlan).

Is “Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I” worth three hours of your life? People spend more time binge-watching a TV show — but if you wait for the movie to hit a streaming service, you won’t get the full effect of watching J. Michael Mero’s gorgeous cinematography of Utah landscapes on a big screen. But temper your expectations, and hope that with the players on the board, Costner will pick up the pace. We will start to find out on August 16, when “Chapter II” arrives in theaters, if the investment is worth it.

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‘Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter I′

★★★

Opens Friday, June 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, some nudity and sexuality. Running time: 181 minutes.

Sean P. Means is The Salt Lake Tribune’s culture and business editor, was The Tribune’s movie critic for 25 years, and is a member of the Utah Film Critics Association. His reviews can be read at The Movie Cricket, moviecricket.net, or heard on “Radio From Hell” on X96 (KXRK-FM), Fridays at 7 a.m.