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.
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.