Gone Are the Days

• Directed by Mark Landre Gould (Feature Directorial Debut)
• April 10, 2018

An aging man in the Old West, unable to come to terms with who he once was and who he now is, is determined to go out in a blaze of glory.

Considering this movie contained Lance Henriksen AND Tom Berenger I went in with mediocre hopes. Both are good actors who bring something special to their work. While neither is the star they once were, I expected quality even if the material itself was not so good.

And both did very well with their material. Despite Henriksen being the central character, Berenger stole the show as Sheriff Will. Not sure why. Maybe it is because it is while Will has his own baggage and issues, he is not a sad sack like Henriksen’s Taylon Flynn.

They spend a lot of time in the opening of Gone Are the Days showing how crappy Taylon’s life is by the start of the story. He’s living all alone on a dusty old farm or ranch or homestead or whatever and things are pretty pathetic for him. I am guessing the desolation of his home is meant to reflect his own state.

Eventually Taylon burns his home and pairs up with a mysterious young rider named Virgil (Billy Lush) who rides up and Taylon just takes off with him. That complete lack of context should be a big clue. There is no dialogue between them that could be taken different ways which would have made the revelation interesting.

With the likes of Lance Henriksen and Tom Berenger in the movie you think even if it’s a low budget film you get something good. Both are fantastic actors and can turn glass into diamonds. And while they are good in this movie with Berenger being better this movie is just so boring and those two actors cannot save it from its own inertia.

Every time it looks like Taylon is going to do something he doesn’t. He either doesn’t feel well or something cuts the action off before it can happen. Will, for his part, is way more interesting from a character perspective in from an overall performance. If they were going for some kind of quiet Western, they probably should’ve cast him in Lance Henriksen’s part and vice versa. Or maybe done a movie about Sheriff Will instead.

In the film it looks like they are trying to draw parallels between Taylon in the present and what happened to his wife in the past but it’s rough and the fact that this doesn’t build to anything certainly doesn’t help that feel important. It just kind of is what it is and nothing more and what it is is not much.

There is also a subplot involving Taylon’s daughter Heidi (Meg Steedle) who Taylon finds working at a brothel. She does not know he is her dad. But it just menders around and brings things to a crawl as he wrings his hands over trying to tell her and laments to Virgil that telling her is hard.

I give it praise for trying to be a somewhat Western version of Dante’s Inferno. Virgil, Jaden (Steve Railsback), River Man (Danny Trejo) among many others as well as some scenes are inspired loosely on the book. That’s points for creativity but the animated film Dante’s Inferno did vastly better with the material and it was to sell a video game.

I think Danny Trejo was cast in the wrong part. It’s a glorified cameo but it’s a glorified cameo that is just meant to be weird and nothing more. Then again I feel Tom Berenger and Lance Henriksen were given the wrong parts, so why not Danny Trejo as well. So what it comes down to is this movie’s two biggest issues are actors cast in the wrong parts, and nothing ever building. It starts on a flat note and stays there.

Gone Are the Days is a good idea that never quite reaches its potential. This is one of those things you can just put aside and skip over. Kind of wish I had.