In six months, the population of Cromwell, Oklahoma, has climbed from 500 to 10,000. Boom times have come to the oil-rich town. So has a new breed of criminal. You Know My Name is the fact-based story of Bill Tilghman, a lawman and former partner of Wyatt Earp confronted by an emerging era when outlaws run whiskey instead of cattle and are likely to tote a tommy gun as carry a six-gun. An ideally cast Sam Elliott plays Tilghman, whose life takes on a newfangled wrinkle of its own. Tilghman makes a moving picture of his Old West exploits; and the success of that silent film, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, spreads his reputation like a brushfire. But that reputation may mean nothing to a thug (Arliss Howard) who hides behind a badge.
Cromwell, Oklahoma, 1924: an oil boomtown full of saloons, cathouses, mud-and-crude-oil streets, bootleg whisky, and gun-toting roughnecks. Technology had overpassed the Old West, in the form of Model T's and oil rigs, but the mentality had stayed much the same. Add to that a population that's a bit tweaky from a combination of cocaine and morphine that had been going around, and you have a recipe for trouble. Enter Marshall Bill Tilghman, a contemporary of Wyatt Earp. Tilghman had made a silent film, The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, and on the strength of his reputation had been called into service as chief of police in the hopes of restoring order to a lawless community. In this fact-based story, Sam Elliott plays Tilghman, a larger-than-life character who was one of the last of a dying era. Many Prohibition agents became renegades in the '20s; Tilghman's nemesis was Wiley (Arliss Howard), a rogue agent strung out on drugs and dealing in bootleg liquor himself. Howard's performance is as overwrought as Elliott's is restrained; together the two offset each other well. The flinty Elliott brings a measure of warmth to his role, especially in his relationship to his wife and kids; he's perfectly cast as the man on the cusp of a new age. As a modern-era Western, You Know My Name rises well above its made-for-cable roots to stand as a good character study and action picture. --Jerry Renshaw
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
kry:
Not what I was expecting. I enjoy Sam Elliot's movies, but this wasn't one of his better ones.
You know my name:
Sam Elliott never made a bad movie that I've seen. Love his eyes and the way he cocks his head.
The Real Cowboy:
Sam Elliot is the quinessential cowboy and the movie was excellent about a real-life quinessential cowboy.
The Last of the Great Frontier Lawmen:
Bill Tilghman was the last of the old frontier lawmen still working as a peace officer in the 1920's. At a time when Bat Masterson was a sportswriter for a New York newspaper and Wyatt Earp was a movie consultant in Hollywood, Tilghman was working as a special agent for the Governor of Oklahoma. This story picks up as he is talked into leaving that post to tackle the taming of Cromwell, Oklahoma, a wild oil boom town. It details that last few months in the life of the man Bat Masterson called "The greatest... more info
