You Know My Name (1999)

A made-for-TV cowboy movie with no bankable stars -- pretty ominous. Yet it's better than that.It's the 1920s in Oklahoma and the oil boom is in full bloom. As Bill Tilghman, a famous elderly retired lawman of the old West, Sam Elliot is living a peaceful life on his ranch not far from a boom town called Cromwell. He's engaged in trying to make movies that show the old West as it really was at a time when Tom Mix ("too purty") is the glamorous hero of silent movies.But Cromwell is having a hell of a bad time. This is prohibition, after all, and, what with Oklahoma being what it is, you have prohibition piled upon prohibition. Yet none of that stops the booze that flows like the Mississippi River through good old Cromwell. More than that, a mixture of cocaine and heroin is on its way from the gangsters in Kansas City. Worst of all, they insist on wearing white after Labor Day.The local sheriff wises up to this and reports it to the man from the Federal Bureau of Prohibition or whatever it is. He's played as a real skank by Arliss Howard, who has an innocent face and the moral character of a flesh-eating bacterium. When they get in his way he casually shoots the sheriff and the local informer and dumps their bodies into an oil tank.The good folk of Cromwell appeal to former lawman Elliot to come and introduce family values into their community. Elliot's wife, Carolyn McCormick -- I almost wrote Dr. Elizabeth Olivet -- is supportive but doesn't want her husband putting his life on the line. They have two lovely kids. McCormick, by the way, is pretty foxy and delivers a more animated and nuanced performance than she ever did on the small screen.So Elliot proceeds to clean up the unrestrained violence and vulgarity of Cromwell and the townsfolk are shocked. Most are supportive but some have grown kinda fond of the booze and the whorehouses and the guns. Especially antagonistic is Arliss Howard, the federal man who gets a big cut of the illegal shenanigans, and his companion in crime, whose name I can't figure out but who resembles Pizza The Hut. It doesn't play out well for Sam Elliot or his family. That much is historical fact.I don't want to bother researching the history of the real Bill Tilghman but there are some scenes that are so thoroughly Hollywoodized that they lose all credibility. I truly doubt that Tilghman, with two bullets in him, survived just long enough to whisper a few last words to his wife -- "Honey...Take care...Take care of the children. I'm on my way to the big roundup in the sky." And I strongly doubt that, on the death of Tilghman, the good folks of the town finally rallied and burned down all the gambling halls, whorehouses, bars, and stills.That's probably the weakest part of the film, the writing. There are times when it's not clear who Elliot is arresting or why, or what happens to them. It seems poorly edited. How did Elliot know that bodies were being dumped into the oil storage tank? And casting gets a bonus point for giving the role of the corrupt federal man to Arliss Howard, whose character name is "Wiley." I don't know whether that was intentional or not but it's a palpable touch. The script, however, has made him not just a bad guy but almost the personification of evil -- he throws his girl friend to the floor, he snorts dope, he's always waving around an automatic pistol. A demerit too for casting as the corrupt sheriff a poor actor who could never play anything but an evil part -- the subtlety of a sledge hammer.But extra points for production design, location shooting, and photography. A lot of attention has been paid to period detail and it pays off.

This movie definitely could have been better. First, you've got a great story of a great man to the people and law of Cromwell. Second, without a doubt, you've got Sam Elliot! After Clint Eastwood, nobody took the role of a great western actor...until Sam Elliot.

Maybe it was the fact that it was a western set at the start of the modern time period, but something about this movie was lacking. Sam Elliot as Tiglman is excellent and Carolyn McCormick as his wife was a nice bit of casting. However, Arliss Howard as the corrupt federal agent was so over the top you would think you were supposed to be watching a present day drug film. Elliot should be acknowledged as a master of the western movie genre, if he hasn't been already. However, this movie didn't have enough of the "western" qualities for me. I'll sit back and watch Conagher again to see Elliot in top form with a great "western" storyline.

Sam Elliott was made for the lead in this film, playing William Tilghman in his final weeks as a lawman in an Oklahoma "Oil Patch" town in the mid-1920s. He's simply over-powering in demeanor and gait and attitude. Pay special attention at the end when he bids farewell to his family. Oh, my!... Other mostly unknown actors are mostly okay, but Arliss Howard's drug-addled primary bad guy seems a tad much over the top (I reckon I cotton to heavies who are bad _and_ smart).... Best all is the production which features a roughneck oil town and mud and iron/steel workers and noise and mobs and blacksmiths and misery and saloons and cathouses and ... well, you get the idea.... As a bonus, movie buffs get to see reproductions of Tilghman's own silent movies about his exploits as a young lawman.... Thus, a many-dimensional treat for us hero-worshipers who grew up with the movies.