MONDAY UPDATE Six reviewers have posted to Rotten Tomatoes. Five have panned the film. The rating now is 17%. Keep refreshing…
SUNDAY Kevin Costner debuted the first of his four “Horizon” movies tonight in Cannes. Despite a 7 minute standing ovation, not everyone was crazy about it.
Remember, “Horizon” was supposed to be a mini series. Costner left “Yellowstone” to make it. Then New Line/Warner Bros announced it as a movie series. Reviewers are saying that Chapter 1, unveiled tonight, is not a movie, but a mini series.
Apparently, Costner — the star of the film — doesn’t appear in it for the first hour!
David Rooney writes in the Hollywood Reporter:
“Kevin Costner has been in the saddle long enough to know the difference between a big-screen feature Western like Dances With Wolves, a miniseries like Hatfields & McCoys or a longform like Yellowstone. All those projects have done well by him and he’s done well by them. His connection to the quintessential Americana genre and the rugged lands it calls home is indubitable. So why is his sprawling new frontier tale, Horizon: An American Saga, such a clumsy slog? It plays like a limited series overhauled as a movie, but more like a hasty rough cut than a release ready for any format.”
Screen International:
Horizon: An American Saga is still suffering from an identity crisis. Beautifully shot, with a deft command of period detail and a starry ensemble cast, Costner’s Civil-war set epic offers an old-fashioned celebration of the pioneer spirit – and a clutch of storylines that never quite have time to engage before the film moves on.”
The Playlist:
“There is nothing wrong with a three-hour movie. There have been absolute masterworks longer than 180 minutes. It sorta helps, however, if the film is, well, a movie. After watching Kevin Costner’s 181-minute-long “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1,” we can’t argue its classification as a film, artist’s prerogative, but we’re still not sure it should be constituted as one by anyone else. And that’s for a multitude of reasons.”
Variety:
“A few of these characters are interesting; none of them are memorable. “Horizon” is no “Lonesome Dove,” though Costner tries, and mostly succeeds, at setting aside Western clichés about what towns really looked like, and how frontier life worked. The real problem is the script (by Costner and Jon Baird), which is shapeless. It doesn’t weave these stories together; it stacks them next to each other like a series of cabooses.”
Keep refreshing…
