Lots going on here. Great visuals across the board. Mostly solid characters with a few standouts in a massive ensemble.
But now let’s get into the weird stuff: first, the structure. This is obviously set up as multi-part. There’s four main threads with only two of them even involving characters we know meet each other. One of the threads doesn’t even start until more than halfway through. It’s unclear if these will connect narratively or we’ll only get thematic connections.
Costner himself shows up about an hour in with the shot from the trailer where he rides up to the camera. Very quickly we get a tense scene with a previously established villain who he kills in fairly short order—my favorite scene by far.
We get no real ending, just a long montage that as far as I can tell is essentially a trailer for part 2 in a couple months. There’s a whole thing in this montage with the flyers which are the only real connection between all of the story threads.
This is such a weird swing that by its very nature feels incomplete. I guess you can’t release a 12 hour movie realistically but I can’t help but think this should have just been a miniseries. It’s undeniably cinematic but I remain skeptical it will be able to stick the landing. Especially with everything else currently still in limbo about the series.