Director: Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner spends fifteen years of American history and 181 minutes of screen time trying to answer one question: what did it actually cost different people to call a stretch of frontier land home?
What is Horizon An American Saga Chapter 1 about?
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 opens the first installment of a planned multi-part epic tracing settlement of the American West from 1859 through the years surrounding the Civil War. Rather than following one hero, the film cuts between several interlocking threads: a wagon train pushing toward a valley already claimed by others, a widow and her children fighting to hold their land after an attack, and a drifter played by Costner himself who gets pulled into other people's conflicts almost against his will. The film doesn't resolve so much as set pieces on the board, deliberately leaving threads open across its long runtime, with battles between settlers and Apache and Comanche communities defending their territory shown from multiple, often brutal, angles rather than a single side's point of view. It's structured less like a conventional Western and more like the opening volume of a novel, betting the payoff comes in chapters still to arrive.
Cast & crew
Costner directs, co-writes, produces, and stars, splitting screen time generously among an ensemble that includes Sienna Miller as a besieged homesteader, Sam Worthington as a cavalry officer, and Giovanni Ribisi, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, and Michael Rooker filling out the wagon train and frontier-town storylines.
Context & significance
Costner self-financed a large portion of the production, reportedly the biggest independent Western undertaking in decades, shooting Chapter 1 back-to-back with a second chapter as part of an originally planned four-film cycle covering the full span of westward expansion.
Where & how to watch
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 streams on K-Time with a free account login, presented with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles so viewers can follow the sprawling ensemble cast in whichever format suits them, part of K-Time's Farsi-language streaming lineup for Iranians abroad.