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Created Dec 23, 2008 12:01AM PST • Edited Aug 29, 2019 04:39AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   An immensely well done piece of agitprop, built around Sean Penn’s Best Actor performance and featuring Gus Van Sant’s most fully realized directing effort, this admirable biopic presents a world apart, yet right next door to the one in which most of us live and were raised.

   Straights needn’t fear Milk, though I admit avoiding it for awhile because I have no desire to see guys kissing each other on screen. But I’m glad I saw it, as much for the important story it tells as for Penn’s peerless acting and Van Sant’s fine filmmaking. And as it happens, the gay PDAs are mercifully discrete.

   Milk the politician realized that the way to sell voters on gay rights is to introduce them to gays. Thirty years later, most of us know plenty of gays, to which list we should add Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk, as American a hero as ever came sashaying down the street. So Man Up and see this movie.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Sean Penn’s stupendous performance as Harvey Milk goes down as perhaps the greatest of this peerless actor’s career. We’re so used to seeing him as the heavy, a macho guy raging about macho things. As Harvey the lover of men and life, he’s physically slimmed down and buoyant, downright gay in the original sense of the word. It brings to mind his Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High oh those many years ago, another performance where he elevated himself into a lightness of being.

   Other than Josh Brolin, the rest of the cast pales in comparison. Emile Hirsh and James Franco turn in competent though not especially memorable performances. This being 2008, I guess we can’t even credit them with being brave for playing gays anymore. Diego Luna as Harvey’s high-strung loverboy and Victor Garber as ill fated mayor George Moscone manage to jump offscreen with some distinction.

   Brolin, however, commands the screen as demented narcissist Dan White. This inimitable performance marks the continuation of two years of such stardom for James Brolin’s grown son. The only question is Why Now? In any case, let’s hope it continues.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Most of the movie has a lightness of being that borders on comedy, making for very enjoyable viewing. Milk and his boys have a Hey Queens, let’s put on a show freshness to them as they discover the twin temptations of political power and libertine sexuality. Gus Van Sant uses these high spirits to great effect, portraying the gays as a force for good that’s American as apple pie.

    The movie doesn’t shy away from the libertine lifestyle then flowering amongst emancipated urban gay men. Guys – gay and straight – have dog-like tendencies that gays all too easily indulged in a sea of similarly inclined other guys. It seemed so harmless – so gay – in the hedonistic 70s that the movie depicts. Of course, the piper would be paid most grievously the following decade.

    This commendable honesty serves the film well, making it a well rounded depiction of a world apart from straight society. As a member of that straight society, seeing another world fully – but from the safe remove of my darkened theater seat – is why I love the movies, and why I admire this one.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    San Francisco during the Seventies comes alive. The City Hall that is more grand than many state capitol buildings, the trolleys, the matchbox houses, the Golden Gate, it’s all here, looking as it must have then.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    Just enough sex and violence to not beat around the bush. As a straight guy, I averted my eyes only briefly.

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    A quick survey of Wikipedia suggests the movie mostly gets the details right.

    Interestingly, Dan White’s egomaniacal torment was apparently triggered by career troubles and tight finances as much as social issues. While he no doubt couldn’t stand Harvey Milk’s forthright homosexuality, he turned on him more because Milk wouldn’t back him on an unrelated political issue, causing him to fall through on a major campaign promise.

    Then, as the sole bread winner for his wife and three children, he wasn’t able to make ends meet on a Supervisor’s $9,600 annual salary, leading him to resign, then ask for his job back. When Mayor Moscone wouldn’t give him his job back, he killed him, and then killed Milk, whom he’d apparently never forgiven for not backing his original initiative. You know what they say. All politics is local.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0