Like five generations of his forebears hard-bitten Montana ranch patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) has ridden herd on America s largest contiguous spread but between his declining health his emotional gulf with his willful kids and ever dicier border dustups with the government developers and the neighboring reservation the trail s never been harder. John Dutton (Kevin Costner) controls the largest ranch in the United States but he s constantly under attack from land developers an Indian reservation and America s first national park. Here big business buy-offs unsolved murders and wells poisoned by fracking are nothing new; they are the consequences of living on the new frontier.