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You Know My Name

1999, Movie, R, 94 mins

You Know My Name: Review

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This cleverly engineered Western offers new perspective on old heroic horizons. Set in the 1920s, when the West was still pretty wild, this fact-based telefilm marks the juncture between frontier anarchy and the new age of gangsterism. By 1924, retired Oklahoma lawman Bill Tilghman (Sam Elliott) consolidated his position as role model by producing an independent movie depicting his famous arrests, including outlaws Cattle Annie and Little Britches. Meanwhile, in Seminole County, crooked prohibition agent Wiley (Arliss Howard) protects his bootlegging cohorts by murdering both a deputy inspector and an old revenuer who witnesses the killing. The good citizens of nearby Cromwell beg Tilghman to come out of retirement, who faces opposition from his wife and a jealous state marshal. No fan of the boom town mentality, Tilghman becomes sheriff and immediately ruffles the feathers of Wiley's fat cats. Tilman screens his movie to convince fence-straddlers, and crusades for cleanup. Who will bite the dust as Tilghman tries to pry the town from the grasp of Wiley and the lawless booze peddlers? Writer-director John Kent Harrison shows a fine flair for the period, and his sagebrush saga also demonstrates rare respect for genre traditions, even as it places outlaws in a more modern context than usual. As the sidewinders hide behind the law and kill for profit, only Tilghman stands for the code of the Old West. Examining the changing face of lawlessness, this expertly produced film juxtaposes Tilghman's real accomplishments with the gussied-up version of his own propaganda piece. The film-within-the-film idealizes the code of honor to which Tilghman is still loyal (in his fashion) and overall we get a fine sense of both the characters' flaws and their nobility. leave a comment --Robert Pardi
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