Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2

That, in the end, everyone is yearning for Horizon remains a beautiful melodramatic touch: in this symbol Costner has weaved a Romantic thread without diminishing the traumatic resonances associated with every depiction of that era.

Chapter 2 delivers the same type of creaky but not uncharming Western melodrama as the first installment, but talks and walks like a film that doesn’t understand what’s at stake.

Doubling down on the first chapter’s intermittent triumphs but also on its grievous structural issues, it is an exercise in contradictions: incident-packed yet oddly sedate; replete with characters new and returning, yet largely lacking in compelling characterization; and, running to over three hours, simply too long a film to be so jarringly abrupt.

The stubbornly naive Horizon series — which may encompass up to two more instalments – is both enjoyably retro and fascinatingly aimless as it attempts to resurrect an old genre with gleaming sincerity.

Being halfway between film and TV gives it the weaknesses of both and strengths of neither; trying to straddle the real with the mythic gives us characters that mostly feel too representative to connect with as individuals, and too individual to make compelling representatives.

Chapter 2 proves to be more fun to watch than 1, at least for this critic.