There’s nothing else like Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1. That’s both a compliment and a warning. The idea of a 3 hour epic Western from writer/director/producer/star Kevin Costner surely has some amount of appeal, especially for fans of the genre and the name behind it. But this isn’t that, or at least it isn’t just that. This is Chapter 1, the first part of a 4 film saga. It’s important to distinguish that this is not the first film in a series with 3 sequels, it’s literally the first part of a 4 film story. It has no ending. It tells multiple stories that don’t intersect, at least not yet. It has no exposition to set the scene. Events happen, characters come and go, time jumps and skips, and it’s up to the audience to draw connections. It’s barely a movie. It doesn’t even feel like the first part of a miniseries. It’s also kind of brilliant in a way that will probably frustrate the hell out of audiences.

Seeing Chapter 1 is a commitment, and not because of its 3 hour runtime. It’s incomplete in a way that other multi-film sagas try to avoid, meaning we’ll presumably have to watch all 4 parts and 12 hours or so of film to be left with the satisfying conclusion to this story. The Fellowship of the Ring may just be the first part of The Lord of the Rings saga, but each of those films are still built to be satisfying in their own right, with traditional narrative beats, a climax, and some kind of resolution, even as they lead into the next part of the story. Horizon – Chapter 1 does not care about that in the slightest. There is no climax, there are no resolutions to any of the stories, there’s no feeling of completion. Even miniseries generally structure episodes around specific events or characters or themes. Horizon could care less about such mundane things as storytelling structure. It doesn’t think it owes you anything, and that’s honestly kind of new and refreshing. But I can imagine a lot of people who buy tickets to Chapter 1 skipping the remaining chapters until it is completed, and even then maybe not bothering to get back to it.

Horizon‘s story revolves around a proposed settlement in the San Pedro Valley in Arizona. It opens with a surveyor and his son laying out plots of land in a beautiful spot next to a river, while being watched by the local Apache. By the next scene, a traveler finds and buries their dead bodies after following a flyer advertising the town of Horizon. By the next scene, the settlement of Horizon has sprung up across the river from three grave markers that loom as a warning for those who choose to try to make a life in that gorgeous spot. Within minutes, this early tent settlement has been destroyed and many of its inhabitants killed by Apache defending their territory in a sequence of violence and tragedy.

The first hour or more of Horizon plays out that way, painting the landscape of the film with setting, context, and flavor, without spending much time on character. It’s filled with moments, often poignant, among the violence: a family splitting up in the hopes that some of them will survive, a youth on a desperate flight on horseback away from pursuing danger, and many other smaller beats along the way. But unlike traditional storytelling, which establishes characters before events get underway, Horizon spends its time crafting the setting and we watch these events unfold without knowing any of the people involved ahead of time. It’s only later, as the film goes on, that we come to know these characters and the way these events will affect the trajectories of their lives.

As the film progresses, it broadens beyond the area of the potential town of Horizon, and encompasses three main stories with a variety of characters. One follows the immediate area of Horizon, with the survivors of the violence on both sides. There’s a mother and her teenage daughter who lose the two male members of their family and work to build a new life at a nearby US Army camp alongside a compassionate Lieutenant whose men helped rescue them and tend to the survivors. There’s the youth who fled on horseback to alert the army, who lost his entire family, and who signs up with a group from the Army camp to hunt for money the Apache who attacked Horizon, but who have little interest in distinguishing between attackers and the many other tribes who live in the surrounding region. And crucially there are the Apache, and the way the violence divides the tribe between those who see survival as only possible when the invading settlers have been stopped once and for all and those who would rather stay safely in the mountains.

It’s not until over an hour into the film that the other stories start to come into the picture. A woman shoots a man named Sykes and flees with a young child. Kevin Costner’s rustler, Hayes, arrives at a ramshackle town in Wyoming and finds his fate intertwined with a local prostitute and the young child of the family she lives with. Sykes, having survived, sends his adult sons to find the woman and the child and Hayes unknowingly intervenes, tying him to the child and the prostitute he feels a moral obligation to protect. Costner’s role in Chapter 1 is quiet and understated, with hints at the larger role he’ll play in the story. There are unexpected turns on Hayes’s journey, even in this early portion of the story, but the character Costner is inhabiting feels rich with potential if only as a reluctant, but eventual, hero.

The final story we’re treated to in Horizon: Chapter 1 involves a wagon train headed West toward Horizon, and it is filled with more classic Western stereotypes than the others. There’s the upstanding leader of the train, played handsomely by Luke Wilson. There are the city slickers who seem completely out of their element and make his life harder. There are the bad seeds causing trouble. And there’s the threat of the Natives who are facing invasion of their land by an unending sea of settlers. The major storylines never intersect in Chapter 1, but by the end you can feel the pull of each that will lead these characters to cross paths down the road.

Chapter 1 of Horizon culminates in an inevitable, racist tragedy, that I won’t spoil but which you can see coming by the midway point of the film. It’s not in any way a resolution to the film, but it does bookend nicely with the opening of the film, and hammers home what is bound to be one of the key themes of the saga. It’s interesting to me that Horizon bears the subtitle “An American Saga,” because it’s clear that this is intended to be a quintessentially American story. Thematically, however, it’s clear that Costner understands that violence is at the heart of so much of America’s story. It’s inescapable in Western lore, and in Horizon Costner seeks to explore the roots and the consequences of that violence. Key in that exploration is a focus on the victims of the violence, regardless of what side of the fighting they’re on, and particularly the underlying racism that motivated so much violence against the Native population of this country.

It’s telling that the most exciting part of Chapter 1 was a montage at the end teasing Chapter 2. There’s a lot of action in Chapter 1, to be sure, but it’s rarely what I would describe as exciting. Suspenseful might be a better word. This is not Silverado, it feels closer to the early portions of Open Range than anything else, but darker and less humorous. I doubt the Kevin Costner of today would want to make another Silverado anyway, as fun as that film is, because it would feel inauthentic to someone of his age and experience. Plus, movies like that already exist. Nothing like Horizon exists. And that may make things harder for his vision, as Chapter 2 has been postponed to a later date after Chapter 1 underperformed at the box office.

Horizon is beautifully filmed, in a way that feels too easy to say when Westerns have such dramatic landscapes to draw visual inspiration from. But Costner finds ways to use the extended running time of 4 chapters to allow the film to breathe in ways that would generally be overlooked. Early in the film, a youth flees on horseback from an attack, and Costner shoots the horse gallop past the camera as his pursuers follow in the distance. He then holds that shot for a good 45 seconds until the pursuit also passes, to allow the audience to feel and understand the speed of the chase and the distance of the landscape. Very few filmmakers would have the patience for that, or would understand the way it heightens the tension by providing context in a new way. Horizon is filled with moments like that, that helped me appreciate his abilities as a filmmaker, in this genre particularly. Combined with a gorgeous score by John Debney and fantastic costuming and production design, every frame of Horizon feels rich.

Costner has surrounded himself with an outstanding cast, including a selection of friends from his past (Westerns and otherwise). In particular, he’s filled the film with powerful actresses and created around them a story that is very female-centered, even in storylines ostensibly led by male characters. Sienna Miller and newcomer Georgia MacPhail anchor the film as the mother-daughter survivors of the opening massacre, forced to cope with the lost of the rest of their family and trying to find comfort and connection in their new circumstances. Jena Malone commands the screen with a small amount of screentime, while Abbey Lee’s prostitute, Marigold, uses a fiery strength to combat insecurity and fear. Plenty of other familiar faces turn up, some with big roles and others with smaller parts that promise to grow as the story moves on. Sam Worthington is all chivalry and conscience as a cavalry officer, playing off a more world-weary Michael Rooker, while Will Patton, Jeff Fahey, Giovanni Ribisi, and many more make appearances.

I hope they find a way to release Chapter 2, already filmed and completed, in theaters soon. As for 3 and 4, they’re currently being filmed without a distribution deal and with no clear path to audiences. I would absolutely subscribe to a streaming service or buy them on demand if necessary, but I’d deeply lament having to watch them at home instead of on the big screen. I understand the trepidation, however. You can’t imagine that subsequent chapters will have more draw than the first, and I could see a significant fall off in ticket sales by people who might have been disappointed by how open ended and unfinished the story is by the end of Chapter 1. For me, though, it’s been a while since a film held my attention for so long after seeing it, and I’ll be impatiently waiting the future chapters of Horizon: An American Saga whenever and however they find their way to me.