Starring: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, Owen Crow Shoe, Tatanka Means, Ella Hunt, Danny Huston, Tom Payne, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Luke Wilson, Jamie Campbell Bower
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story: Epic western drama co-written and directed by Kevin Costner. Horizon: An American Saga (2024) explores the lure of the Old West and how it was won, and lost, through the blood, sweat and tears of many. Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, the story goes through an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.
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22 Top Quotes from Horizon: An American Saga
Desmarais: That man who held himself moral in years of plenty, he will rise in a different light. He will take up against his brothers, and they will war over the withering fruits of the land.
Trent Gephart: [to the settlers] You might have stopped here, but that’s it. The only ones staying here are them.
Trent Gephart: So that’s what you found when you got here? Was those graves?
Town Settler: Yes, sir.
Trent Gephart: And you wouldn’t take that as some kind of sign?
Town Settler: Sure, we did. Sign to build on this side of the river.
Trent Gephart: How’s that working out for you?
Trent Gephart: The men who hunt this land, they’re not going to share it with you. What you build, they will burn down.
Marigold: Well, I’d just like to have a drink tonight with someone that knows how to act. And maybe has something to say I don’t already know. And I’d rather he’s tall. That’s what I want.
Col. Albert Houghton: [to Trent] Hear you were up there making speeches. Thirty mad Apaches couldn’t scare these people off. Thought maybe you could?
Col. Albert Houghton: You just have to stand at the river and you can see what the men and the women up there see.
Col. Albert Houghton: These people have been pushing the same wheel back home around and around till they can’t bear another turn on it. That’s the path they inherit, and if they try to change it at all, they have to do it by inches. You may recall that’s what drove us across the ocean to this country, in the first place.
Col. Albert Houghton: You and I are standing guard on one of the last great open spaces, Trent. And there’s no army of this earth that’s going to stop those wagons coming, little as they’re wanted.
Col. Albert Houghton: The place isn’t unlucky, it’s just the poor b****rd under it.
Col. Albert Houghton: And that’s what a man will tell himself, tell his wife, and they’ll tell their children, that if they’re tough enough, smart enough, and mean enough, all this will be theirs someday. That’s all they’ll reason in the face of fear. They’re the ones that are going to hold out. And guess what? Some of them will.
Col. Albert Houghton: Now you and I have to look out for our own survival, Trent, and let this place do what it’s done since time immemorial.
Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan: What will happen here is only what’s bound to happen.
Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan: You see, we don’t make our history any more than the Apache makes his weather.
Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan: When that war ends, and it will end, whether we’re one nation or two. They’ll all start looking west again, sir. And then these open spaces you mention, that the Aboriginal love so well, that they say they can’t live without. Well, sir, they’ll all close up in a blink of an eye, sir. That’s how it ends here. I believe that’s how all the frontier ends.
Caleb Sykes: [referring to his gun] You use that much? This here?
Hayes Ellison: Not the way you mean it.
Caleb Sykes: How else do you use it? Hell, maybe you drive nails with it.
Hayes Ellison: I just mean it’s fairly new. Haven’t had much need of it yet.
Caleb Sykes: Not yet? It looks like we got ourselves a bad man, right here.
Caleb Sykes: There ain’t much you do in these territories, but what you do do you’re all watched at it, and I don’t mean by God. What order there is comes from me watching you. Man watching his fellow. Seeing what he’ll stand and what he won’t.
Caleb Sykes: My father says, if they see you suffer an insult, men will come try you. You better make it known you let no injury pass, however small, and your judgement is sure, and terrible. Falter, he says, and they will take from you, and they will keep on taking until you are wiped clean from this land, and your name with it. I’m just saying that’s something you might want to keep in mind.
Caleb Sykes: [to Ellison] You ain’t getting me, boy. Not you. Not in this place.
Hayes Ellison: We just got to keep going.
Hayes Ellison: You’re not taking the full measure of this, Mary. Think about how far these men just came, and how long they’ve been at it over one old injury. I know the man I met was on his way to kill everyone in that house. He might as well have been walking up to get the mail for all it bothered him.
Frances Kittredge: [to Trent] You know, I won’t presume anything about you, but whatever it is you’ve rehearsed to say to me, I think you’ve said it. Strictly, there’s no reason for you to stay here. And here you are.