Don't knock it till you've tried it....the film people, the film!

Rating: 8/10 (26 February 2009)

San Francisco in the early 1970s and Harvey Milk, an out of the closet gay man, wants to turn his new home on Castro Street into a bohemian refuge for like minded gays. Meeting resistance and witnessing the groundswell of hate towards his kind, Milk begins campaigning to be elected to public office, where he hopes he can alter the perceptions of the gay way of life. But as Milk's popularity grows, so does his national standing, and with that comes greater responsibilities, and perhaps, greater enemies.....
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to get voted into a major public office of America, that's not a spoiler, this is a fact, and this smart biography of the man charts his rise to that position....and what was to follow. Director Gus Van Sant clearly cared about this project {Milk known to be a hero of his}, and in truth it shows. Gone has the wishy washy feel of his overtly independent pictures, and in its place comes professional slickness backed up by one of 2008's great lead performances. Sean Penn has an habitual knack of rubbing people up the wrong way, often derided for his opinions and frowned upon for his perceived aggressive nature, it surely can only be the most stoic of Penn haters who can deny that the man has acting talent in abundance. Here as Harvey Milk he double layers the performance with impressive emotional urgency, so much so good is his performance, that after five minutes of film you forget that it's actually Penn playing a role, he has quite literally become Milk and in the process bagged another richly deserved Golden Statuette.
Tho to put Milk's winning charm purely down to Penn would be doing a big disservice to a fine supporting cast. Led by the ever excellent Josh Brolin {Dan White} and with impact turns coming from Emile Hirsch {Cleve Jones}, James Franco (Scott Smith) and Diego Luna (Jack Lira), it's with much credit that all of them are comfortable with the story and deliver such telling performances. So what quite stops Milk from being a modern day masterpiece? A piece of work to shine in this modern age of acceptance? Well for all its well crafted intention, and the easily accepted chest thumping for gay pride, it just fails to really knock down any doors {or open new ones in fact}. Van Sant's picture is a well informed snapshot of the times, and certainly raises some posers about politics and sexual preferences, but really it doesn't leave a lasting impression outside of Penn's sublime performance, and that kind of feels like a wasted opportunity to me.
But cest la vie, one thing I'm sure Van Sant will be pleased about, is that once viewed, Milk is a name that few will ever forget about, and maybe that was all Van Sant wanted to achieve in the first place? 8/10