‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2’ Review: Kevin Costner’s Ambitious Western Project Frustrates Once Again
variety.comJessica Kiang There’s an enormous amount to describe, but very little to actually say about Kevin Costner‘s bedraggled “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2,” the second of a planned four installments in his sprawling, multistranded western, that plays, after “Chapter 1″‘s muted reception in Cannes, out of competition on the final day of Venice.
Doubling down on the first chapter’s intermittent triumphs but also on its grievous structural issues, it is an exercise in contradictions: incident-packed yet oddly sedate; replete with characters new and returning, yet largely lacking in compelling characterization; and, running to over three hours, simply too long a film to be so jarringly abrupt.
It’s hardly a surprise that it picks up where the last left off, given the last left off with, essentially, a preview-reel of part two.
Viewers bewildered by that montage’s final image — a lingering close-up of a mustachioed Giovanni Ribisi, who did not otherwise appear — will at least have that mystery partially solved when “Chapter 2” opens in Chicago, with Ribisi’s shady Mr Pickering persuading a couple of local rubes to invest in the land-grab scheme that is advertised on all those flyers encouraging settlers to move to the bucolic frontier idyll dubbed Horizon.
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