Honestly I think the more colons you add to your film’s title, the less likely that it will be a success. You might get away with one, but two are going to kill your project stone dead. Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter 1 seemed a guaranteed recipe for commercial disaster, and indeed its abortive theatrical release appears to bear this out. Asking audiences in 2024 to come watch a three-hour western that openly only covers one-quarter of a four-film narrative, in competition with the vast panoply of streaming services, was at best hopelessly optimistic. As the dust settles – two films complete, a third shot but unedited, and the finale only existing on paper – Kevin Costner is once again reminded that the difference between visionary masterpiece and costly vanity project is the box office return.

I think there is a canon of great western stars, and that Kevin Costner sits within it. He is arguably the first major addition to it since Eastwood, carving himself a reputation for strong, well-acted revisionist takes on the genre despite its overall decline as mainstream entertainment. Dances with Wolves (1990) was a bona fide masterpiece, and his 2003 follow-up Open Range came damn close. Even his post-apocalyptic spin on the genre The Postman (1997) had a lot more merit than audiences and critics believed at the time. Through television projects like Hatfields & McCoys (2012) and Yellowstone (2018-24) he has continued to maintain his reputation. It is clear that the success of Yellowstone led to a belief its large global audience would follow him into cinemas; that was not to be the case.

The most frustrating part of watching Horizon is that, if anything, it feels like watching the first three episodes of a prestige serial from HBO or Netflix. It jumps back and forth between a series of as-yet-unconnected storylines, and does not conclude so much as stop: what initially seems a rushed montage turns out to be an extended teaser for the second instalment. There is certainly a strong beginning to the film, and plenty of middle, but there is literally no end to be had. If reviewed as an ordinary film, Horizon would fare very poorly indeed.

Yet this is not an ordinary film. This is an honest attempt to bring the long-form story structure of television into movie theatres. While it has been done with literary adaptations several times before, notably with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it’s an uncommon sight indeed to see it done with original material. Much of the film, such as it is, is properly outstanding stuff. The acting is almost uniformly superb. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. The scope of the thing is enormous.

If there is a focus to the piece it is the frontier community of Horizon, set up in a prologue on Apache territory and leading to the killing of its founders. Some time later and a larger township has been established, only to be attacked by the Apache once again. While that narrative splits between relocated townsfolk in a nearby cavalry fort, a posse dispatched to take revenge on the Apache attackers, and the Apache themselves, a parallel plot follows an abused woman on the run from her gang leader husband with her violent in-laws in pursuit and a rider unintentionally dragged into her plight. That forms easily enough content for a three-hour feature, yet Costner also adds the story of a wagon train rolling through the wilderness at the two-thirds mark, which overloads the picture and exhausts the audience. This seems to come at the expense of the film’s Apache characters, who simply get squeezed out of their own story.

It frustrates, and it does so particularly because on a scene-by-scene basis this is top-notch stuff. These individual scenes are longer in duration that the viewer is used to. It all runs with a measured pace that enhances character and atmosphere, and gives time for the actors’ performances to flourish. It is a great cast of often-underrated talent as well, including the likes of Michael Rooker, Sam Worthington, Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Will Patton, Luke Wilson, and of course Costner himself.

Were this a limited television series it would be showered with awards. As a film, and much to my irritation now that I’m hooked in, it very likely is not even going to have an ending.