‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2’: Venice Review

Dir: Kevin Costner. US. 2024. 192 minutes

Saddle up there pardner: just like the coated wagons on the coronary heart of Horizon, Kevin Costner’s epic western continues to traverse some superb Utah terrain slowly, tentatively, sometimes getting distracted and misplaced, earlier than sallying forth once more, heroically. The stubbornly naive Horizon collection — which can embody as much as two extra instalments – is each enjoyably retro and fascinatingly aimless because it makes an attempt to resurrect an previous style with gleaming sincerity.

 Makes an attempt to resurrect an previous style with gleaming sincerity

Very a lot a continuation of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, which screened at Cannes, Chapter 2 follows the identical individuals throughout the identical storylines, essentially the most lively path coming through John Debney’s persistent, old school rating which leads this epic laborious by the nostril to no specific vacation spot. The fussily-conceived Chapter 2 – among the storylines might come from Bonanza’s Ponderosa ranch or that Little Home On The Prairie – is a bit more dynamic than the opener.  There’s a consolation in figuring out that each dangerous man will get his simply deserts on this prairie oater, in spite of everything. 

Pulled from theatrical launch by Warners in August earlier than closing out the Venice Movie Competition, Chapter 2 ends with one other weird finale which suggests there’s a lot, way more to come back. (By the point Chapter 2 winds up, viewers will likely be already over six hours in Costner’s debt.) Followers of the primary will likely be up for the journey, though a $30m home gross in June suggests there weren’t sufficient of them to maintain continued vast theatrical publicity. The episodic, strangely-edited and -paced nature of the venture as is means that this won’t be its last launch format. 

There are not any vital new gamers in Chapter 2 (other than the arrival of a Chinese language household, excruciatingly signified by ‘jaunty Chinese language music’ within the rating). The tales are nonetheless being instructed from a pioneer perspective, with scant consideration paid to Native People. We’ve met all of the lead characters already, and our familiarity makes Costner’s unusual jumps between the storylines extra palatable: no less than we all know who all of them are, even when among the finer particulars might need been forgotten. The movie even appears to be getting a little bit bit tighter because it focuses principally – no less than within the first half – on the coated wagon path led reluctantly by Matthew van Weyden (Luke Wilson). They’re out to stake their declare to the mysterious Horizon, a fictitious plot of land deep in Native American territory in an Arizona valley which the unscrupulous developer Pickering (Giovanni Ribisi) has been advertising as a homesteader’s paradise. 

Following the wagons and the rifts between their occupants, Chapter 2 finds an uneasy rhythm. The self-centred British couple, performed by Ella Hunt and Tom Payne, are in for a nasty comeuppance, and Douglas Smith’s Sig is a menacing foe. Their storyline hooks up with that of Owen Ketteridge (Will Patton) and his three daughters, the eldest of which, Diamond, is performed by a sparky Isabelle Fuhrman. Their surname will ultimately lead us again to the well-dressed widow Frances Kittredge (Sienna Miller), from Horizon’s first chapter, and her daughter Lizzie. Among the stars of the primary instalment begin to soften away, together with her suitor Sam Worthington, who volunteers to be posted ‘again East’, whereas his navy superior performed by Danny Huston barely has just a few strains right here. 

Elsewhere, in fact, we’ve Costner’s character, taciturn gun-slinger Hayes Ellison, straight out of central casting, who, after some entanglements with the badass Sykes clan in Chapter 1 — by which he killed their most fascinating psychopathic member – has rocked up on a horse-wrangling ranch policed by one other pyschopath. Costner appears to have misplaced curiosity within the story of Hayes’s sidekick Marigold (Abby Lee) from the primary movie, and she or he’s solely awarded just a few paltry scenes. But it surely’s laborious to recollect what the unique beef with the Sykes was all about, so Hayes finds a brand new one right here.

Relaxation assured, visuals, once more supplied by DoP Michael Muro, are as clear and beautiful as they have been the final outing — significantly within the horse-wrangling ranch, but additionally within the Utah valleys and plains. There’s at all times one thing to have a look at, once you’re not distracted by the gleaming white tooth of all of the protagonists, or how Frances Kittredge is so good at laundering her crisp shirts when she bodily doesn’t have a roof over her head. That is no Meek’s Cutoff.

It’s mythic stuff: Costner and his co-writer John Baird would discover it far too tawdry to linger within the mud of actuality. Unhealthy guys are evil and die, actually, on a regular basis. There are noble ladies like Frances, and prostitutes. Humorous accents abound. We’re a great distance from Dances With Wolves, because the Native American tribes right here circle their sacred creek, presumably exhausted after burning the settlement down the final time. And Costner’s Hayes, like everybody else, is headed in the direction of Horizon, and a long-promised and prolonged reckoning.

Eyes to the Horizon, viewers! There’s extra a-comin.