Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

In 1924, legendary lawman turned silent film star Bill Tilghman (Sam Elliott) reluctantly agrees to clean up a grimy Oklahoma town controlled bootlegging gangsters and full of rowdy oil-rig workers. He ends up squaring off against coked-out, renegade G-Man Arliss Howard.This production looks fantastic, with lots of attention to detail and great atmosphere. Unfortunately, there's too much talk and not enough action to go along with the vivid sets, costumes, and locations. This ends up being more of a character study than a western or gangster story.Sam Elliott does a great job as Tilghman, who rode with the Earps and went up against the real-life Wild Bunch. If anything, the film does do an excellent job at portraying a man who has little left to offer but his pride and stories of past triumphs.

If a SMILE could be the star of a movie, Sam Elliott's inimitable smile would be the star of "You Know My Name." Elliott may well be the greatest leading man in westerns in the post-1970 period, and he is at the top of his game in this based-on-a-true-story oater set in Oklahoma in the early twentieth century. There have been better westerns, sure, but there have not been many better western star turns than this. Elliott makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time, ALL the time, and at the end you just do both.

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.