The three-hour epic Western earned an extended standing ovation Sunday at the prestigious international event.
He built it, so they came. And they applauded.
Kevin Costner was so overjoyed — and yes, relieved — by the audience reaction, he literally was in tears Sunday evening after the premiere screening of his epic Western Horizon: American Saga — Chapter 1 at the Cannes Film Festival.
Addressing the festivalgoers after a standing ovation estimated variously between seven and ten minutes, Costner, according to the showbiz trade paper Variety, “was visibly emotional as the film received huge applause and chants of ‘Kevin! Kevin! Kevin!’ During his speech, Costner thanked the audience and promised ‘three more’ installments of the Horizon franchise, which is already due to get a sequel in August.
“’I’m sorry you had to clap that long for me to understand that I should speak,’” Costner said to laughter. ‘Such good people. Such a good moment, not just for me, but for the actors that came with me, for people who believed in me who continued to work. It’s a funny business, and I’m so glad I found it. There’s no place like here. I’ll never forget this — neither will my children.’”
Among the early reviews, the report from Hollywood.com’s Pete Hammond looms large as an out-and-out rave — and a full-throated tribute to Kevin Costner.
“There can be no doubt if there is one person bound and determined to keep Hollywood’s long history of Westerns alive it has been Kevin Costner, Hammond writes, adding, “And that has been true right from the beginning of his career when he played the freewheeling scene stealer Jake in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado in 1985, and he also made an impression as title star of 1994’s Wyatt Earp.
“But his real mark on the genre has been not just as an actor but also as director and producer behind the scenes, first with his Oscar-winning 1990 Best Picture Dances With Wolves and 2003’s terrific Open Range with co-star Robert Duvall. For the past few seasons he has prominently been involved in a more contemporary take in his hit TV series, Yellowstone. But without question his most ambitious and sprawling swing yet, Horizon: An American Saga, which kicked off Sunday night at the Cannes Film Festival in an out of competition world premiere, is the pinnacle of this star’s love affair with the West and how it evolved.”
Steve Pond of The Wrap added his own admiring praise for the man and his movie.
“For the last two years in a row, one of the major premieres at the Cannes Film Festival has been a mainstream film that works with the trappings and tropes of the Western genre. But there’s not much connection between Martin Scorsese’s Oklahoma-set 1920s period piece Killers of the Flower Moon, one of the hits of last year’s festival, and Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga, which had its premiere at the Grand Theatre Lumiere on Sunday evening.
“For Scorsese, approaching that location and time period meant thinking hard about what he could bring to a genre that he felt had peaked with directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks in the 1940s and ’50s, and essentially been ended by Sam Peckinpah’s revisionist Western The Wild Bunch in the late 1968s.”
“Costner, though, has little interest in revisionist thinking about the genre; Horizon is proudly, gloriously old-fashioned, a Western for those who bemoan that they don’t make ’em like that anymore. They do, if the they is Kevin Costner.”
