REVIEW #385 Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 (2024)

Set in the late 1800’s Americans discover the lure of the Old West, battling gangs, native Americans and the desert along the way. 

Horizon An American Saga: Chapter 1 is the perfect example of a film made for TV and I know we all throw that phrase around a lot these days but everything from the pacing, the quantity of characters and even the events within each act, were all better suited for TV. The first act was really impressive, thrilling action that illustrated the brutality of the conflict between Americans and the natives but it uniquely aimed for the audience to feel sympathy for the new settlers and not the natives, which we don’t see too often these days. Those first 45 minutes filled me with promised, hooking me in and ripping my heart out, it even pulled a few tears from me too! Unfortunately the following two acts couldn’t quite follow up to it and it spent more time just familiarising us with the characters rather than pushing the overarching narrative, which I still don’t quite understand what that is, after 3 hours! 

It is obviously pointing towards each group of characters heading for this mysterious land called Horizon but Costner kept us pretty in the dark about that. I also felt like the timeline was quite jarring, little time jumps that made it hard to follow and suddenly a widow who just lost her husband is courting another man and doesn’t seem to be grieving at all after five minutes! I think those little sub plots and character details really need fine tuning for part 2, otherwise the whole saga will feel rushed. I’ve come out of the cinema having liked what I saw, but I don’t think it’s generated enough interest for me to be excited for a part 2, so if the first instalment doesn’t do well financially, which doesn’t look likely, I think part 2 will do even worse. As I mentioned earlier, if we had the entire saga put into 10 hour long episodes, I think we’d be looking at a pretty highly acclaimed show, it’s perfect for that sort of template. Unfortunately we didn’t get that.

Overall (6.5/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan