"You gotta give 'em hope..."

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2009)

Milk is a story of great joy and intense struggle, soaring victories and profoundly deep loss. The inclusion of real footage from the 60s and 70s further confirms the legacy of sickening police roundups and mass incarceration on a local level, plus world-wide bigotry and fear based on self-imposed ignorance and inhumane religious law.
The performances by every actor, especially those by Sean Penn, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin and Diego Luna, are 100% spot-on and truly stunning. Harvey Milk himself surely would be overwhelmed with pride at the dedication of these actors in telling his story.
Thirty years after Milk's political success, we still have untold numbers of gay teens committing suicide and gay men feeling forced to marry straight women to protect themselves from rabid, foaming at the mouth, Anita Bryant loving, anti-gay moral "majority." Despite our constitution, history proves that equal rights for minorities are never granted without a fight. Harvey knew this. Martin Luther King knew this. Both were assassinated for speaking the truth, giving the oppressed genuine hope, and inspiring others to do the same.
"The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it." ...by Harvey Milk