Cannes divided over Kevin Costner’s “absorbing” yet “taxing” Horizon

Last Updated on May 22, 2024

Kevin Costner may have a lot of drama swirling around his small screen western but that doesn’t mean we weren’t excited for his next cinematic epic, Horizon: An American Saga. Now, we have the first reactions on social media out of the Cannes Film Festival, where the film screened out of competition.

Check out some of the initial reactions to Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga:

It’s great to see Kevin Costner and his passion project doing well on most fronts, especially landing – at least to many – the epic feel (in scope and the number of characters it can handle) while also serving as something of a tribute to the great westerns in movie history. But, perhaps expectedly, it’s not all praise right now for Costner and Horizon. Some publications took its three-hour runtime – which the director must have known would be a target – to task, saying it’s “taxing.”

Just as he once was with baseball movies, Kevin Costner became synonymous with the western. What remains exciting about Horizon isn’t just that Costner will be giving us a fill of the genre as we await any concrete news on the final season of Yellowstone, but that it’s his first movie in more than 20 years, having last helmed the underappreciated Open Range. And of course there was 1990’s Dances with Wolves, winner of seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director (sorry, Marty!).

Horizon “explores the lure of the Old West and how it was won—and lost—through the blood, sweat, and tears of many,” reads the official synopsis.“Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Kevin Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure will take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends, and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.” Chapter 1 of Horizon gallops to theaters on June 28th, while Chapter 2 will follow in the rear on August 16th.

What do you think of the first reactions to Kevin Costner’s Horizon out of Cannes? Will you be checking it out when it hits theaters?