Lance Henriksen did an OUTSTANDING and Oscar worthy performance in this slow burn character driven movie. I agree with some of the other critiques that too much time and emphasis was spent on the characters deteriorating health (in the beginning of the movie) but other than that I can't find another fault in this GEM of a movie. Every single actor brought their A game.....The direction was spot on. The setting and costumes were genuine and the camera and lighting were done superbly. The score was appropriate and added to the scenes wonderfully. I bawled at the end.....and I loved it.

In the bonus track of the DVD of "Gone Are the Days," the producer described the film as "not a typical Western" and a drama with a "redeeming quality."

The atypical feature of the film was a pair of imaginary characters who appear in the mind of the old sodbuster Taylon Flynn, a former outlaw, who is described by his pal Virgil as "a rotten weed" and described by himself as nearing "the end of the trail" in life. There is a tongue-and-cheek moment in the opening sequence when the deathly ill Taylon is administered by a town doctor a bottle of cough syrup called "Pure Heroin!"

The plot is simplistic in the goal of Taylon to finally admit to a young woman named Heidi that he is her father. Taylon intends to rob a bank to provide her with a bankroll and a fresh start in life and to get out of the "godforsaken" town in which she has a been consigned to a brothel. While the film was well-photographed, the locations chosen were not very attractive. The endless sage brush and tumbleweed truly conveyed a "godforsaken" locale.

Taylon sets off on his trusty steed named "Tantrum." While the horse is placid, it is the decrepit rider Taylon who is throwing the tantrums like a Western version of Don Quixote! Eventually, Taylon will reunite with a face from the past in the form of the sheriff of Durango, Will McMullan, who, in fact, is Jake, his old nemesis who shot his buddy Virgil. In the convoluted plot, it turns out as well that Taylon Flynn is a fictitious name for the Texas bankrobber, Wesley Flynn.

One of the most bizarre moments in the film occurred during the climactic shootout at the end. Just before the gunfire began, a motorized vehicle drives through Main Street, with the sheriff shouting, "Get that thing out of here!" As the timeframe of the film was unspecified and presumably in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the scene with motor car was jarring and awkward. That should have been a deleted scene relegated to the bonus track of the DVD.

The slow pacing of the film, the "godforsaken" locales, and the rather depressing subject matter of an old timer at the "end of the trail" were major drawbacks in this film. Despite the good performances of veteran actors Lance Henriksen and Tom Berenger, "Gone Are the Days" never delivered the full impact of "redemption" that was the goal of the fimmakers.

I'm a patient movie viewer, but believe me when I tell you, you'll have to wait this one out if you ever want to see the end credits. Without exaggeration, the entire picture is Lance Henriksen's character coughing, wheezing and staggering to a slow death over the entire course of it's ninety nine minute run time. There are a few interesting plot elements thrown in to kind of keep you interested, like former outlaw Wesley Flynn/Taylon's (Henriksen) daughter becoming a prostitute upon the death of the man who raised her, and the idea that Taylon and sometimes partner Virgil (Billy Lush) are planning to rob a bank in Durango to cap Taylon's bad guy career. But boy oh boy, it takes a while to get there, and the execution never achieves a dynamic level of suspense, even with the eventual throw down that involves a couple of cartoonish hard cases (Wes Robertson, Brent Chase) and an ex-Texas Ranger. Funny, but even the sheriff of Durango, the ex-Ranger, had an alias. As an outlaw, he was Taylon's old partner Jake O'Malley, but the Durangoans (can that be right?) knew him as Sheriff Will McMullen.

I'll say this though - Lance Henriksen's performance was undeniably flawless as a fall down, sometimes get up drunk. It was kind of shocking to see how old he looked in the picture, but what the heck, he's seventy eight years old as I write this and the picture came out this year. So don't expect to see the kind of slick gunplay he performed as Ace Hanlon in "The Quick and the Dead" where he parodied a quick draw artist. Here he could hardly get the gun out of his holster.

As for his hooker daughter, Heidi (Meg Steedle) didn't know Taylon was her old man until the end of the story, and if you're that interested you'll have to watch to see how that all played out. Oddly, in the very next movie I watched, there was also a prostitute name Heidi portrayed by Caity Lotz. It's a small town crime thriller titled "Small Town Crime".

Another minor plus for this picture was a single line of dialog that will someday rank among filmdom's most celebrated lines, right up there with "Go ahead, make my day" and "I'll be back". That was when Heidi talked Taylon into taking a bath, offering an encouraging word with "You smell like a horse's ass". Funny, but at that moment I think I was able to smell him too.

Oh, and one more thing. Virgil was a ghost, and now that I think some more on it, maybe Danny Trejo's River Man was too.