2024, Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves) -- download
Kevin Costner returns with another western, a long, confusing return to glorifying how American expanded its western frontier, confusing because it is a three hour setup piece not told so much as a plot, but as a series of vignettes following a handful of characters, that we assume will lead them all to the coming town of Horizon, which exists only as a poster promising land, and a lot of graves.
And yet, despite the snark, I was fully invested all the way through, and through all the stories of all the characters.
All of Costner's previous directorial endeavours have been westerns: Dances With Wolves, The Postman, Open Range and now the Horizon saga. Not sure why I am surprised I own all four. He is obviously attracted to the lone gunman, the solitary figure, haunted, exhibiting a skill at killing, but tenuously holding onto a moral code. That could describe half my D&D characters.
His character, Hayes Ellison (Kevin Costner, Waterworld), is just one of many "main characters" in this ensemble piece. We meet Ellison as just another cowpoke leading a caravan into a mining town in the mountains of Wyoming. Alas he gets mixed up in the defense of a local prostitute, and guns down a violent member of a violent family. Now they are on the run.
But I get ahead of myself. All the stories begin with the not-yet town of Horizon. Its merely a place on a river in the San Pedro Valley, near the Mexican border in present day Arizona. The fledgling town, really just a collection of tents and structures under construction is destroyed by Apache, leaving only and handful of survivors to be brought under the protection of nearby Camp Gallant. Frances Kittridge (Sienna Miller, The Lost City of Z) and her daughter Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail, debut) are a pair of those survivors, rescued from a collapsed escape tunnel, after their house burned above them, killing her husband and son. They become the dears of Camp Gallant, and especially Lt. Trent Gephart (Sam Worthington, Avatar).
Meanwhile, a wagon train on the Santa Fe Trail is making its way to Horizon, led by Mathew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson, 3:10 to Yuma), dealing with the harsh trail, wagon repairs, lack of water, and the foolhardiness of its less than prepared members. There are also some Kittridge's on the wagons.
Meanwhile, Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe, Barkskins) fights with his tribe over the raids he made on Horizon. He needs the white man to pay for their interloping, especially since it has diminished the hunting so terribly, they are at odds with neighbouring tribes. But his elders believe its a war they cannot win, and merely move higher into the hills to hide.
Meanwhile, a group of Horizon survivors have banded together to hunt down and scalp Apache. They don't really care much whether its the ones who attacked them or any Indian they happen to come across.
And back to Ellison's story. It begins when camp woman Lucy (Jena Malone, Nocturnal Animals) shoots a man and escapes with her son Sam. He survives and sets his own sons to find her, kill her, and take back his son. It was Sam that prostitute Marigold (Abbey Lee, Mad Max: Fury Road) was protecting from the the Sykes boys, when Ellison had to kill one of them.
All these stories, all these characters. We are only expected to focus on a handful, but there are so many names and faces. Given the time of the movie, and the number of parts, Costner takes his time with these stories. There are times when it felt like there hadn't been any dialogue for more than ten minutes, and he lets the movie breathe. Of course, the vistas are breath taking and we are allowed to soak them in. This would have done so well on the biggest of screens. I think that most people will find the vastnss confusing, especially since the story telling is not as tangibly apparent. There are things happening, people they are happening to, but is there a point? Not really, as its three hours of setup. I mean, we don't even have the town yet.
The movie ends with a massive flash-forward montage, scenes from the next movie. I would have likely been going out to see it, but alas, its been pulled from any initial cinema release potential.
Of course, I liked what I watched. Again, I repeat, despite being three hours, I did not feel the passage of time. Admittedly, I rarely watch movies in one sitting anymore, especially the This Guy movies (those I watch absent of Marmy), as I do them as time allows. But still, I did not feel the weight of the hours, and I do so even with movies I like, such as Furiosa. But I can see why people saw this as a collected, edited mini-series instead of a singular film.
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