How the West was, once. Like another sprawling epic about the nation’s expansion, this movie covers a lot of ground, figuratively and literally, but in this case it does so a bit more reflectively than the gung-ho epics of yesteryear. The story’s disparate threads are indeed so disparate that the viewer must wonder if all these people are ever going to come together, and it is only the promise of at least one more movie that offers hope that it will all eventually tie together. Indeed, it can be difficult to keep everyone straight while watching this flick, as there are so many characters scattered across the landscape—with few of them ever formally introduced—that the viewer must be forgiven for losing track. So clarity of story is not necessarily a strong suit here. Nevertheless, the tales that are being told do mostly make for compelling viewing, especially in the most harrowing scenes (quite a few characters die throughout, starting early on). Added to the stories that hold the interest is a visual feast; this film looks amazing all over. Put it all together and you wind up with a film that’s somewhat flawed, but also very much worth seeing. And one suspects the second chapter, unburdened of the need to perform any backstory, should really start to pull these stories together into a cohesive narrative. Building a cinema epic, much like building a nation, takes a lot of time and effort.
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