Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)

'Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1' surpassed my expectations!
A three-hour western, which is only the first of many connected entries? Yeah, that doesn't exactly set the pulses racing! Based on that, I was anticipating it to be a slow-moving set-up to future chapters. However, to my surprise this opening installment is a lot of fun. For a film of such a length, it absolutely flies by; this felt like a 2hr, max, movie to me.
My main praise for this film is directed at the pacing (evidently), the visuals and the score - the latter is particularly outstanding. I will say there are a fair few scenes that I felt could've been lit better, mainly across the opening chunk - not a big deal, though.
There are so many characters in this, some may say too many but honestly I enjoyed all the different people portrayed onscreen. Kevin Costner is very solid, though to be truthful he isn't really involved all that much in this chapter - at least to how much I was expecting to see of him. I wouldn't say there is a main standout from the cast, but I don't mean that negatively.
Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Abbey Lee, Jamie Campbell Bower and Michael Rooker are some of the notable performers, though it truly is an ensemble because I can't really separate any of them based on their performanes - which is actually a good thing. Mind you, as good as he is, Rooker's Irish accent is awful, I gotta say - rather distracting.
How annoying that we have to wait so long for the seque... oh, ''Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2'' drops next month! Bring it on!
...oh, and I (unintentionally) watched this on July 4th - how American of me. *shudders*

Feels like an entire season of a TV show compressed into a 3-hour motion picture.
It's beautiful to look at, but has no chance to set up its characters and make you care about them, even though it demands it. Not coming back for the sequels.