Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
Western movies have never been my favored genre but have experienced and relished the best: “True Grit”, “Shane”, “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid”, “Blazing Saddles”, “Stagecoach”, “High Noon”, “The Magnificent Seven” and the 1991 Oscar winning “Dances with Wolves”, director Kevin Costner took home an Oscar for best director and the film won the best picture of the year. It was outstanding and secured Costner’s lionization as an actor and director.
In “Horizon” Kostner claims total ownership; he infused his wealth, authorship, directorial and acting acuity, into what he hopes will be four parts. With audience approval his ambition might be realized. It is flawed but powerful, compelling viewers to analyze history and the wrongs perpetrated upon the indigenous population of America. The battles, scalping, raging fires, gorgeously filmed, do not garnish empathy for the tribes. But the greedy, avaricious aggrandizement of the “white” invaders allows little space for sympathy.
Commencing in 1859 with a surveyor and his son marking boundaries of eventual ownership; crosses, representing their demise, followed by a conflagration of a town where an intended massacre leaves a woman “Frances” (Sienna Miller) and her daughter “Lizzy” (Georgia MacPhail) without a husband/father, son/brother. Rescuing the grief-stricken survivors is American Lieutenant “Trent Gephart” (Sam Worthington). And the plot evolves and multiplies.
Dizzying are the myriads of scenarios viewers must adapt to; they are intriguing, imbued with fine acting (Will Patton, Abbey Lee, Luke Wilson, Jamie Campbell Bower) but exacting. As far as “Western’s” prevail, at this point, not in the classic category. As a Costner fan, I am willing to engage in the second chapter before making a conclusive prediction.
THREE STARS!!!
Peneflix
