Kevin Costner’s “Horizon” Goes West but Gets Nowhere

Kevin Costner’s directorial career is dominated by Westerns, starting with the film that launched it, “Dances with Wolves” (1990), which was nominated for twelve Oscars and won seven, including Best Picture and Best Director. It’s a mildly revisionist story, with Costner playing a U.S. Army officer who befriends a Sioux tribe and lives among them, actions which make him a traitor in the eyes of the U.S. government. Costner also directed the hearty but conventional 2003 Western “Open Range,” in which he co-stars with Robert Duvall. So Costner is hardly a naïf when it comes to Westerns; he understands the heritage, the context, the risks. But you wouldn’t know it from watching “Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1,” his heavy-handed, big-footed return to the genre.