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Kevin Costner stars in the first chapter of Horizon: An American Saga. (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc./TNS)

Chapter 1 of Horizon: An American Saga marks Kevin Costner's return to the Western genre that launched him to stardom nearly 40 years ago. This first part constitutes a stern handshake with its audience: just get through these first three hours, folks. Stop complaining. You know what these people had to do survive?

Things could look up and kick off in August, when Chapter 2 of this respectfully labeled American saga continues in theaters, followed by Chapter 3 (currently filming), then financial and distribution/streaming arrangements with Warner Bros. the grand finale. But Chapter 1 feels like a useful equestrian opera overture to a curiously even-handed passion project.

Horizon dates back to the 1980s, when Costner's career was launched by Silverado (1985), in which he was by far the liveliest element, playing Scott's ditzy, cowardly brother Glenn. Rewatching Silverado today, in the wake of Costner's familiar, snarling scowl at Yellowstone, it's astonishing how little remains of that earlier artist, and it's not just the difference in age. Now 69, Costner has settled into a sort of narrow, canyon macho archetype, which has worked well for him, according to the scripts. Here and there in Horizon it works too, when the calculus breaks down and a stray moment of hidden sensation surfaces, quietly.

But the actors are at the mercy of their material. Chapter 1 of Horizon is broad but superficial, and poorly dramatized between passages of violence, some well staged and effective, others more generically brutal. The film surely wins the Loudest Splurch sound design award; When an Apache arrow hits a human target, it's as if the arrows are literally wired for sound.

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The first Horizon film is divided into three television episodes of one hour each. Co-writers Jon Baird and Costner crafted a long narrative designed to transport multiple groups of characters from different parts of the West to the same destination, a small town under construction on a river called Horizon in the San Pedro Valley, aka John Ford Country. This is where the film begins, in 1859.

Its Apache land and white colonizers (well, settlers) put literal stakes in it to claim it for themselves. This quickly leads to a retaliatory Apache massacre, contextualized somewhat by a handful of scenes in Chapter 1 devoted to, or at least concerned with, the Apache warrior brothers Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) and Taklishim (Tatanka Means) and their tribal factions. Two survivors of the massacre, brutally widowed Frances (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail), are greeted by the kindly Union army officer played by Sam Worthington at a nearby fort. Love is in the air, but modestly.

Costner directed Horizon in addition to co-writing, producing and partially financing the project; he recognized planning to spend $100 million or more of his own money to bring all four pieces of the saga into existence. As an actor, he enters Chapter 1 an hour in, playing tight-lipped horse trader and former gunslinger Hayes Ellison. He's in pre-statehood Montana Territory for reasons to be named later, and he soon finds himself battling a random bastard from a nasty, bloodthirsty local clan. By chance, Costner's character ends up going on the trail with cunning sex worker Marigold (Abbey Lee) who is caring for a baby, while evil men pursue them and Costner's estranged wife stays behind, for the moment, invisible and distant.

Meanwhile, along the Santa Fe Trail, Luke Wilson plays a train conductor trying to keep his Horizon-bound settlers alive in hot Kansas Territory, with little water, lots of crises and, at one point, a few perverted voyeurs spying. on the most beautiful woman while she takes a starry shower for herself. Wilson's character, the voice of reason, essentially shames the woman for hogging the water and attracting male attention. You can see here what Costner and Baird are trying, adding this information about the scarcity of the water supply. But dialogue like this, and too much of Horizon, is just plain flat. I don't think Costners is his best colleague here, either as writer or director. He and his cinematographer J. Michael Muro have an eye for topography and settings, but Horizon needs more than horizons.

So you take what you can get. I was honestly pleased with Miller's courageous attempt to make her saintly cliché human, and with the ease and laconic command that Michael Rooker (as a Union Army officer and sounding board for the commander of the fort Danny Huston) brings equipment. Chapter 1 ends with a highlight reel from Chapter 2, giving the audience an idea of ​​where all the characters are headed and introducing new characters from the big city. The only thing missing is a voiceover: Next time on Horizon

I can't help but wonder if Costner was inspired by the wrong kind of westerns. Occasionally watch Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur (1953), which gave James Stewart one of his most invigorating challenges; the films are quaint but determined, lean, compact, character-driven, full of shifting allegiances and centered, if uncomfortably, by a fascinating and skeptical protagonist. Costner has the courage to work in this same territory. Either way, Horizon, so far, is more about a certain set of cinematic memories than a film in its own right.

Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 2 stars (out of 4)

MPA Rating: R (for violence, some nudity and sexuality)

Duration: 3:01

How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 27

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.