The overall evaluation can be made when Costner's project is totally complete, hoping that it will be able to come to light.
Costner's story is an epic, a magnum opus on the western and therefore on America, about its origins and this film is only the beginning, the introduction where you can breathe the strength of a great story and the strength of the western.
The staging is excellent, there is visual strength, there it is wide-ranging and even if you are only faced with an introduction you notice the desire to create a large fresco, a set of characters different from each other, their stories, their origins.
Costner delivers immediately of legacies as in the film there are three very young characters who will have to face their own lives such as the very young Sam, the young Lizzie and the child Russel, each of them will end up in different ensembles, Lizzie in the Northern army camp together with her mother, Russel with the scalp hunters and Sam initially looked after by Mary, a prostitute, he will be entrusted to a Chinese family.
So there is multiculturalism, the fusion of ethnic groups but also of different social classes just like America is.<5 >
I found the fascist criticism of the film absurd, yes, the Apaches in the film attack and kill the settlers but first of all in the film it is explained that that territory was initially Indian and the elder of the tribe disavows these actions saying that this will mark the end of the tribe.
In addition, Costner makes a western film with the themes of the genre and paints a portrait of American history which is made up of blood and wars, of struggles for land.
The film also shows a certain racism and tribalism of the Americans, scalp hunters who cannot see killing Indians just to make money, so there is no fascism there is simply the desire to tell the American cross-section in all its forms.
Being an introduction, everything is clearly open, the narrative arcs of the characters have to be completed as well as the whole story, therefore some characters, a little-explored situation, perhaps it will have more depth in subsequent films, it will all be better evaluated when we have the overall picture of the work.
A strong introduction with characters who live and an ensemble that already has the flavor of a wide-ranging epic breath.
