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.

It's a shame for Lance Henriksen, Tom Berenger, and Danny Trejo, to be trapped in a movie that lacks interest, but here they are in "Gone Are The Days". This film qualifies as a colossal mess that is not only sleep inducing, but randomly puddles around like a doodle bug. Henriksen vacillates between blurred reality and confusing hallucinations, leaving the bewildered viewer bored and disinterested as to what he is seeing. In the end, there is no big payoff because you are trying to put together a puzzle with plenty of missing pieces. For a Western, there is no action, but just a slow agonizing terminal cough for 100 minutes. - MERK