Kevin Costner put $38 million of his own cash behind 'Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1.' Critics say it sucks.

According to critics, "Horizon" features a number of intertwined stories set in the US of 1859.

Critics said this approach made the movie feel slow, jarring and confusing to follow.

It has a "slow build" that "takes so long to get going that Costner doesn't even appear on screen until an hour in," wrote Robert Daniels, a contributor to RogerEbert.com.

He called the first third of the movie "a long preamble, a structural decision indicative of a film grinding and failing to prove itself as a standalone feature."

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair's chief critic, wrote: "The writing and direction is so erratic and confused that it's near impossible to figure out who several characters are, let alone what they are seeking to accomplish."

Peter Bradshaw, a film critic for The Guardian, wrote: "And so the film moseys blankly along and, aside from some mildly diverting moments, it spends 180 keeping you guessing as to when and whether it is going to be interesting."

Many critics thought the structure of "Horizon" was more like an episode of a TV series.

Lawson, who called the movie a contender for "biggest American boondoggle" in Cannes, compared "Horizon" to "Game of Thrones."

"Costner, who cowrote the script with Jon Baird, introduces us to a television season's worth of characters and plot threads. He jumps from one location to another, much as 'Game of Thrones' did," Lawson added. "Yet Costner never lets us feel the grand interconnectedness of these stories."

David Rooney, chief film critic for The Hollywood Reporter, wrote that "Horizon" was like "a limited series overhauled as a movie, but more like a hasty rough cut than a release ready for any format."

Owen Gleiberman, Variety's chief film critic, wrote that the movie lacks a "moving" story for viewers and "feels like the seedbed for a miniseries."

"What you realize, after a while, is that 'Horizon' isn't just a glorified TV series made with more expensively gritty production values. It's the setup for a TV series," he wrote later in the review.

"It's the early stuff we need to know before the drama totally kicks in. It doesn't weave these stories together; it stacks them next to each other like a series of cabooses."

Pete Hammond, Deadline's chief film critic, and Lee Marshall, a Screen Daily critic, praised the female actors in the movie, especially Sienna Miller.

Miller "does her best to give some emotional heft to a cliched role" Marshall wrote of her performance as Frances Kittredge.

However, Gleiberman and Daniels said that none of the characters were memorable due to the constant story-hopping.

"Even with the cataclysmic scenes of death, the first hour does little to endear these characters," Daniels wrote. "They're bespoke people whose connections aren't immediately clear and only become vaguely obvious toward the picture's conclusion."

Daniels wrote that Costner has only a minor role to allow space for the other main characters.

According to critic reviews, a major plot thread in "Horizon" is the conflict between settlers and Native Americans. This conflict is prevalent in Western movies, and there have been racist portrayals of Native Americans in the past.

Hammond wrote that the Apache tribe members in the movie are "authentically cast," and Gleiberman wrote that the Native characters are not portrayed as "'the other,' the simple enemy."

Other critics said that the Apache characters were underdeveloped.

"The film only pays them lip service," Lawson wrote. "Mostly they function as the brutal antagonizers of the Horizon townsfolk, who are nearly wiped out in a nighttime raid that is one of the film's very few action sequences — the rest is the dullest and hoariest of talk."

Daniels wrote that the screentime for the families of the Apache warriors "pales in comparison to their white counterparts."

"As much as Costner tries to play an even hand, attempting to give the Indigenous and settler perspective equal attention, it doesn't wholly work," Daniels added.

May 20, 2024: This story has been updated to use a figure Kevin Costner gave for his spending on "Horizon," rather than an estimate. He told GQ it was $38 million.