The Western, once Hollywood’s star genre, is today a shadow of its former self. Only a few filmmakers dare to continue to delve into the mythology of American expansion into the Far West, and one of them is Kevin Costner.
Once a mass idol thanks to The bodyguard, Costner remains an actor and director faithful to his principles and to the legends of the frontier. This is proven Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, first installment of a very ambitious tetralogy that, after its presentation in Cannes 2024, arrives in Spain on June 28th. As you will see below, its top manager has extensive experience when it comes to cowboys.
‘Silverado’ (Lawrence Kasdan, 1985)
Costner began to carve out a place for himself in the western genre with silverado, role he got because Kasdan wanted to make up for having him removed from the footage of Reunion (1983). Without that decision in the editing room, Costner’s relationship with the western would be different, but the actor exuded enough charisma to stand out in this film about four heroes and a city taken over by a corrupt sheriff, also starring Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Rosanna Arquette and Scott Glenn.
‘Dances with Wolves’ (Kevin Costner, 1990)
One of the films of the 90s and one of the few westerns that focused on the representation of Native Americans. With an unprecedented humanism, Dancing with Wolves It revealed Costner’s Western man profile to us, in addition to consolidating his star status. This story about a disenchanted officer who settles at a border post after the Civil War and in the middle of the Western colonial enterprise received seven Academy Awards, including best film and director.
‘Wyatt Earp’ (Lawrence Kasdan, 1994)
If in 1993 George Pan Cosmatos He dared in tombstone with the legend of OK Corral In a film lasting more than two hours, Lawrence Kasdan was not going to be any less. His vision of one of the founding myths of the Western is a work of more than three hours and an exquisite cast: Costner, Gene Hackman, Dennis Quaid and Michael Madsen. History of roots and violence, as the father of the protagonist, played by Hackman, says, “nothing counts as much as blood; The rest are just strangers.”
‘The Man from the Future’ (Kevin Costner, 1997)
Considered one of the biggest flops of the 90s, Costner took a gamble with this post-apocalyptic film, but with a deep western spirit, which fell quite short of the $80 million invested. Set in 2013, Messenger of the future It presented a ruined Earth after a nuclear war in which the survivors survive under the yoke of the tyrannical General Bethlehem (Will Patton). The arrival of a mysterious postman, played by Costner, will become a ray of hope.
‘Open Range’ (Kevin Costner, 2003)
Debtor of the films of Clint Eastwood Costner vindicated himself in Open Range like a man of ditto after the disaster of Messenger of the future. With a twilight tone and a Robert Duvall Incredible, this work about cowboys forced to resort to violence when they face a powerful rancher and the sheriff who works for him is not only one of the westerns of the decade, but also boasts, and rightly so, one of the best shootout sequences in the genre.
‘Hatfields & McCoys’ (miniseries, 2012)
The Hatfields and the McCoys were two families from the border between West Virginia and Kentucky whose feud was so violent that it has entered the annals of slang as a metonym for any intense rivalry between families. In the eponymous miniseries, Costner plays the patriarch William Anderson ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield and Bill Paxton to Randolph ‘Randall’ McCoy. Two titans, lots of shooting and an extraordinary success for the History Channel, which broke audience records and triumphed at the Emmys.
‘Yellowstone’ (series, 2018-…)
In November comes the second part of the final season of this series of Taylor Sheridan which brought the actor back for the role of John Dutton III, the patriarch of the Yellowstone ranch. A serial universe expanded into the past and, if this spin-off materializes with Matthew McConaughey will soon move into the future. In any case, already a classic that, like the best westerns, addresses the question of territory. “This is America. We don’t share the land here,” Costner’s character comes to say.
‘Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter I’ (Kevin Costner, 2024)
It’s been quite a few years since Kevin Costner dreamed of making his own conquest of the West, but three decades had to pass and up to four properties in California had to be mortgaged so that one of the last cowboys of cinema could see his odyssey almost completed. Horizon. With a choral cast (Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, and the filmmaker’s offspring, Hayes Costner, among others), it is an epic set in the Far West during the Civil War.
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