Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

The movie was very well done,, very realistic. For a 3hr movie- the movie felt like it was over much quicker! The authenticity with the indigenous people and clothing and life style was enlightening as well as the brutality. Unfortunately it is our history, to move forward and correct we have to except our past. I can’t wait for chapter 2!!

Way too much sex and nudity. Do NOT watch with, or let your kids watch this movie, especially the younger children, but really wouldn’t want any kids of mine watching this kind of movie.

Slow to start yet doing a good job building up the characters. By the end of the movie, we wanted it to keep going like a good book or TV series. Anxious to see the 2nd part in August. With all the story lines coming together in part two, it should be explosive.

Where the makers of Horizon: An American Saga so eagerly have desired to make a grand tribute to the Western genre, they seem to have been getting lost in creating a good story line. There seems to be no main connecting plot, but the audience is just brought along from one random tale to another, and yet another, all describing some part of the Western myth. There are so many characters and basically shallow side stories that the total feels muddled, and in general it is many times hard to spot any of the fundamental intentions with either characters or scenes. Moreover and possibly in an effort to mend some confusion, chapter 1 in what obviously would be better off as a TV series, probably season 1, this three hour film ends with a chaotic trailer, trying to collect the lacking plot and somehow hang the viewer on a rotten cliff for the chapter 2, but this doesn't help, only makes it even stranger. In addition to a sea of clichés and a rather pathetic film score, there is a number of technical historical flaws that one should expect would be taken care of during research, such as weapons invented in 1859 and what animals were used for wagon train. All in all, disappointing by Costner.

We really enjoyed chapter 1 -Great story lines, Great Characters, Great Acting, and Great Scenery! Looking forward to the next Chapter! True western heritage style we enjoyed the storytelling.

Too violent for children under 13 and possibly 17. The movie was also too long. I found myself looking at my watch to see how much longer the movie would be. It was disjointed. I get it, it was telling parallel mostly boring stories. I was pretty disappointed overall. As one critic wrote. " It was how the west was "yawn.". If you have 3 hours to kill and nothing much else to do then maybe go and see it.

Dances With Wolves was an amazing movie, and after Yellowstone, I thought maybe Kevin Costner had found his stride again. He’s a great actor, but can he direct a high quality movie? Coster funded Horizons with some of his own millions, and I wish him well. But this isn’t anything close to the quality of Dances with Wolves, and it’s slow and dull compared to Yellowstone. He should have stayed on as John Dutton in Taylor Sheridan’s western soap opera. ( he was earning 1 million per episode). I admire his passion and committment. He has wanted to do an epic western for decades, finally did it himself with little backing from major studios. But this movie is a flop even though the scenery is beautiful. It’s a mix of multiple storylines, which isn’t inherently bad, since this can be great literary device ( eg. Vigo Mortensen did something similar in The Dead Don’t Hurt). But this is a weak film with stock characters and melodrama. No storyline is coherent, so it feels like a fistful of Westerns all blended together incoherently. Maybe the next installment will be better, but this is a three-hour marathon. It made me miss the Duttons, and Taylor Sheridan’s ability to tell a gripping story in film.