I went into this morning’s ‘Horizon’ screening rooting for Kevin Costner who shelled out $38 million of his own money to make these films. I wanted to like it, I really did. What I got instead was an utterly meandering and dull experience.
The film plays like a 3-hour set-up for the second film. It’s all play and no action. I’m starting to think that this one should have just been a mini-series. There are so many characters, locales and storylines that it would have greatly benefitted from the breathing room of episodic TV.
With that said, The Daily Beast’s Esther Zuckerman disliked ‘Horizon’ for another set of reasons. The headline for her review states, “Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Review: A Misogynistic, Racist Mess.” Here’s an excerpt:
Everything about Horizon is retrograde. Men are noble heroes (like Hayes Ellison, the drifter played by Costner) or brutes who toss around the women, themselves either saintly like Miller or frivolous and nagging.
Or, maybe, it’s just an accurate recreation of America’s past history? Isn’t Zuckerman describing what happens in practically every classic western? It comes with the genre. The film takes place in 1861, not 2024.