For Once, the Academy Got It Right

Rating: 8/10 (13 April 2009)

My wife and I did not particularly enjoy "Milk" as we expected to, though Sean Penn is letter perfect as Harvey Milk, and Josh Brolin does a good job as Dan White, the Supervisor who kills Milk and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber). Perhaps it's because we knew the story, having lived through it, and that deprived it of narrative surprise.
Perhaps it's because of what's missing. While Milk's crew of young supporters, especially Alison Pill as Anne Kronenberg and Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, come through as intended, there's no real exploration of the tactics that enabled Milk to cobble together a majority from the Castro and the Haight Ashbury communities that formed his district. We learn about the Castro, but Haight Ashbury might as well be the other side of the moon for all the illumination that the script and director Gus van Sant provide.
The subplot involving Milk and his two lovers is not particularly engrossing and the suicide of the needy Diego Luna (Jack Lira), the second of the two, is curiously irrelevant and unmoving. If it weren't for Penn's performance, this film would likely be classified as a dud.