Horizon: An American Saga (film / series) : I hope it gets better later because this is not doing well so far

I have really enjoyed Yellowstone with Kevin Costner so when I found out there was a planned series of 4 films with Costner involved about the history of the frontier in the United States with a decent budget that was planned for cinemas I got excited. I got even more excited when I found out that a ton of stars, many of whom you wouldn't expect, also signed on to be in this production of epic proportions. Then I watched it....

I have to say, it has been a while since I have been as disappointed in something as I have been in this.

I'll attempt to point out why it is that this production which looks fantastic on paper no doubt.... just isn't very good

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When I fire up a film and look at how long it is and see that it is 3 F**king hours long, I normally am already starting out poorly. I don't think that there are very many good reasons for a movie to ever be that long unless it is Lord of the Rings. So perhaps I went into this thing with a sour taste to begin with. When it starts out, it is kind of unclear what we are meant to be focusing on, but in the 2 hours I made it through this one, it is meant to be telling the tale of the American expansion into the west of the United States through the perspective of the settlers, the Native Americans, and also the US military that is charged with attempting to keep the peace.

In some ways, this sounds like it would be wonderful and at times, it is. However, I believe too much time is spent on attempting to tell the story from all angles, so much in fact, that you start to lose interest in the multitude of "side quests" that are all going on at the same time.

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It's a bit difficult to get too heavily invested in any particular character when at any given point in time we are having more and more and more characters thrown at us, and none of them seem to be in any sort of central position. Often, we are put through an extremely long sequence of showing someone setting up a settlement next to a river, constructing the beginning stages of some buildings for 10 minutes or so, only to have him and his son killed off screen and the next time we see them they are just dead. We are made known that this was the work of the Native population who do not want whitey coming on their land, but why put so much into the buildup just to have this dude offed without so much as us learning his name or even what the hell he is doing there?

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Something that was likely the most frustrating to me was the presentation of the Native Americans: You can tell that the "inclusion" people got their muddy little paws into the production of this, because they are presented almost entirely as victims throughout as well as being far more powerful than they actually were in reality. Another issue that I have with the focus that they make on having the Indians be 1/3 of the story is that, I would guess, there aren't really many actual Native Americans left for us to have featured in films and therefore many of the people that are in shots are absolutely terrible actors and actresses. Are they actually speaking a genuine language? I'm just going to assume that they are but your guess is as good as mine.

Another issue that I have with this movie is that it jumps around A LOT. We will be watching some people at a community that suffers a midnight Indian attack at one moment, and then we are shuttled off to Kevin Costner arriving in a town next to some train tracks as he is wooed by a much younger and very pretty girl for 20 minutes with no apparent connection to literally anything that has happened up to this point. I don't mind that he, as the writer, director, and primary producer of this wants to have his own character featured prominently, but was this self-service? It certainly seems like it.

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I will say this though: They did an absolutely fantastic job of making Costner appear 20 years younger than he actually is. Keep in mind that Kev here is 70 years old. When I reach that age, look as good, I will not.

The sets are quite good although at times, especially in the scenes that involve being in what is meant to be a large town somewhere, are pretty cheap looking, and this could be because of the fact that the budget for this sort of undertaking is quite small considering the grand scale of things and how many big names are in it. The stuff they do out in the great wide open look authentic and really nice and I suppose Costner has as much experience in this as anyone else due to his involvement in Yellowstone.

Should I watch it?

It has been called "Dune for Dads" so I'm gonna give this a "maybe." I am one of those people that watches so many films that it is at times difficult for me to give a fair review of something because I consider my time to be valuable so when a production slips and even makes tiny mistakes in their presentation, I tend to give up or be very citical of what is going on in a way that many other people might not do.

I don't like how the story is going in so many different directions and perhaps this was done intentionally as these things will all come together at some point. The way the box office is going right now, and the fact that it struggles to maintain a 5/10 rating on all the major ratings' sites though, is not a good sign as far as getting the green-light to carry on with the remaining 3 films that are meant to make up this thing. As it stands right now this movie hasn't even made back half of its production budget and as is the case with most movies, we can presume that this budget of $50 million can be doubled if we are factoring in marketing costs. Studios tend to shy away from losing scores of millions, so barring any sort of miraculous turnaround, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this gets cut off before they can even make the rest of them.

_{the only legal way to watch this film at the current time is in theaters}