Kevin Costner bet the ranch (literally) on his 30-year passion project, and damn if it doesn’t feel like stepping into a 3-hour John Ford painting that suddenly starts bleeding.

This isn’t a movie; it’s the first quarter of a 12-hour Western novel dropped on the big screen with zero apologies. 1850s–1860s, multiple storylines sprawling from Montana to Santa Fe like wagon tracks: Costner’s stoic horse-trader hiding scars, Sienna Miller’s settler widow clutching her kids in a burning cabin, Sam Worthington’s crisp cavalry officer, Jena Malone’s badass mama on the run, and a hundred familiar faces (Luke Wilson, Dale Dickey, Abbey Lee, Danny Huston) popping in for what feels like the pilot of the greatest TV series HBO never made.

The San Pedro Valley massacre is brutal and unflinching; kids die, heroes fail, and the Apache raid hits like thunder. Then it just… keeps going: wagon trains, gunfights, slow dances under lantern light, and Costner staring at the horizon like he’s waiting for the rest of his life to show up.

It ends on a 10-minute montage teaser for the next three chapters that had the theater gasping “wait, that’s IT?!” Yeah, it’s incomplete on purpose. You’ll either leave furious or absolutely hooked.

I’m hooked. Bring on Chapter 2.

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