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

• Kevin Costner's new movie "Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

• Costner left "Yellowstone" and spent $38 million of his own money to make the movie.

• Critics were not kind to the movie, saying the movie felt more like a TV series.

Kevin Costner's upcoming western movie, "Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1," which he mortgaged a house to fund, was battered by critics after its premiere at the Cannes film festival.

Costner has invested a lot in "Horizon," a four-part movie the actor-director has been trying to make since 1988.

Costner told GQ that he spent $38 million of his own money and mortgaged his seaside estate in Santa Barbara, California, to fund the movie.

Last year, Costner also testified in court during a child-support hearing that his sudden departure from "Yellowstone" in 2023 was influenced by "Horizon."

Costner directs, stars in, and cowrote "Horizon," where the first part premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.

(The second part is also ready for release soon, while the rest are still in production.)

However, critics were not impressed, and the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score currently stands at 20%.

Here's what critics have said about "Horizon: An American Saga — chapter 1," which premieres in theaters on June 28.

Critics said "Horizon" chapter one was a slow, muddled start.

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."

Some critics said "Horizon" felt more like a TV show.

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."

Critics were divided on whether the performances were good.

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.

Critics mostly agreed that the Apache tribe is underutilized.

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.

Read the original article on Business Insider