June
26
Tags
HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA:CHAPTER ONE (15)
HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA: CHAPTER 1 (15)
Director: Kevin Costner
Runtime: 3h1m
Cast: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, Owen Crow Shoe, Tatanka Means, Ella Hunt, Tim Guinee, Danny Huston, Colin Cunningham, Scott Haze, Tom Payne, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Georgia MacPhail, Douglas Smith, Luke Wilson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Alejandro Edda, Wasé Chief, Michael Anganaro, Angus Macfadyen, Jon Beavers, Alex Nibley, Kathleen Quinlan, Etienne Kellici, Amos Jason Charging Cloud, Bodhi Okuma Linton, Gregory Cruz, James Russo, Jeff Fahey, David O’Hara, Chris Conner, Leroy M. Silva, Bernardo Velasco, Tom Everett, Glynn Turman, Giovanni Ribisi and more.
Synopsis: Academy Award-winning visionary filmmaker Kevin Costner directs New Line Cinema’s vast “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapters One and Two, a multi-faceted chronicle covering the Civil War expansion and settlement of the American West. A story of America too big for one film, this true cinematic event also stars Costner, who co-writes with Jon Baird (“The Explorers Guild”) and produces through his Territory Pictures.
URL: https://youtu.be/YYsReoZMj1k?si=FGPmuWzmoYiH_W1r
Academy Award-winning visionary filmmaker Kevin Costner directs New Line Cinema’s vast “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapters One and Two, a multi-faceted chronicle covering the Civil War expansion and settlement of the American West. A story of America too big for one film, this true cinematic event also stars Costner, who co-writes with Jon Baird (“The Explorers Guild”) and produces through his Territory Pictures.
In the great tradition of Warner Bros. Pictures’ iconic Westerns, “Horizon: An American Saga” explores the lure of the Old West and how it was won—and lost—through the blood, sweat and tears of many. Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure is intended to take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be a citizen of the United States of America.
Costner returns to directing for the first time since his 2003 critically acclaimed hit “Open Range,” and revisits Civil War-era America, the setting for his 1990 blockbuster and directorial debut, “Dances with Wolves,” which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. He produces alongside Howard Kaplan and Mark Gillard, with Danny Peykoff, Robert Scannell, Armyan Bernstein, Charlie Lyons, Barry Berg and Rod Lake executive producing.
Costner is joined behind the camera by director of photography J. Michael Muro (“Billionaire Boys Club,” “Parker”), production designer Derek R. Hill (“Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” “The Magnificent Seven”), editor Miklos Wright (“For All Mankind,” “Open Range”) and costume designer Lisa Lovaas (“Ambulance,” “Transformers: The Last Knight”). The music is by Oscar nominee John Debney (“The Passion of the Christ,” “The Greatest Showman”).
The first part of the saga for which Costner is director, co-writer and has a slow narrative which doesn’t establish anything particularly exciting for its multiple unresolved storylines without ending and leaving us hanging in suspense for Chapter Two.
But Chapter One of the epic concludes by suddenly accelerating into a super-fast preview montage of Chapter Two, featuring many new characters.
The various plot strands in Montana, Wyoming and Kansas entwine around a new white pioneer settlement in the 1860s American west, called Horizon, attracting any number of hardy or naive souls who don’t appear to know or haven’t been told that the Apaches will not surrender this territory without a fight.
After a mysterious attempted slaying of a man in a remote shack one terrible night, Apaches attack the Horizon settlement and burning it to the ground, killing many, and making a widow of a homesteader’s wife: Frances (Sienna Miller) leaving her children fatherless. It is an authentically riveting sequence.
A retaliatory raiding party is organised by vindictive and venal trackers capture. They are reluctantly permitted to do this by the Unionist soldiers, exasperated by the existence of the Horizon township which is situated in open country almost impossible for them to defend. Soon the sympathetic, handsome First Lt Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) establishes a romantic connection with Frances.
Meanwhile, the Apaches are deeply divided about how to handle the threat from the settlers. Young Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) is furious at his father’s lack of direct action. Another plot strand has a gruelling wagon train led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson) having to deal with food and water shortages, the ever-present risk of attack and a couple of lazy entitled British who refuse to pull their weight.
Jena Malone plays a former prostitute, now respectably married, who leaves her small infant in the babysitting care of another sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) while she and her husband confront the troublesome pair of Sykes brothers over a land deal and longstanding disagreement
Kevin Costner’s character is the cool, undemonstrative, traditional, slow-talking and mysterious, Hayes Ellison, who comes riding into town and immediately gets into an unlikely relationship with the much younger, Marigold. . After Hayes’s violent altercation with Caleb Sykes (Jamie Campbell Bower) this improbable romantic pair head off together with the child.
Horizon – An American Saga is reminiscent of the great Western genre epic and has a large ensemble cast, it demands to be seen on a big screen and followed up with Chapter Two to understand how the various storylines connect.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 screened at the Cannes film festival and is in UK and Irish cinemas from 28 June.
Chapter One of Horizon – An American Saga screened at the Cannes Film Festival opens in the UK and Ireland on June 28, 2024 with the second on August 16, 2024.
Images courtesy of: Warner Bros
…
Horizon An American Saga Production Notes-Bios 11Jun24.pdf
Scroll To Top