Milk [Blu-ray]
His life changed history. His courage changed lives. Academy Award winner Sean Penn stars in this stirring celebration of Harvey Milk, a true man of the people. Based on the inspiring true story of the first openly gay man elected to major public office, this compelling film follows Milk’s powerful journey to inspire hope for equal rights during one of the least tolerant times in our nation’s history. With a stunning all-star cast, including Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsh, Diego Luna and James Franco, it’s the emotionally charged story that was proclaimed the Winner of The New York Film Critics Circle Best Picture Award!When a famous person, like the nation’s first openly gay male city supervisor, inspires an acclaimed book (The Mayor of Castro Street) and Oscar-winning documentary (The Times of Harvey Milk), a biopic can seem superfluous at best. Taking over from Oliver Stone and Bryan Singer, Gus Van Sant, whose previous picture was the more experimental Paranoid Park, directs with such grace, he renders the concern moot. Unlike Randy Shilts’ biography, which begins at the beginning, Dustin Lance Black’s script starts in 1972, just as Milk (Sean Penn, in a finely-wrought performance) and his boyfriend, Scott (James Franco, equally good), move from New York to San Francisco. Milk opens a camera shop on the Castro that becomes a safe haven for victims of discrimination, convincing him to enter politics. With each race he runs, Harvey’s relationship with Scott unravels further. Finally, he wins, and the real battle begins as Milk takes on Proposition 6, which denies equal rights to homosexuals. He does what he can to rally politicians, like George Moscone (Victor Garber) and Dan White (Josh Brolin). While the mayor is willing, the conservative board member has reservations, and after Milk fails to back one of White’s pet projects, the die is cast, leading to the murder of two beloved figures. If Van Sant’s film captures Harvey in all his complexities (he was, for instance, a very funny man), Milk also serves as an enticement to grass-roots activism, showing how one regular guy elevated everyone around him, notably Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), the ex-street hustler who created the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial. Released in the wake of Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay marriage amendment, Milk is inspirational in the best way: one person can and did make a difference, but the struggle is far from over. –Kathleen C. Fennessy
Get to Know the Cast From Milk
Sean Penn (Harvey Milk) |
Josh Brolin (Dan White) |
James Franco (Scott Smith) |
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Stills from Milk (Click for larger image)
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Interesting and Well Done
I thought this was a very good movie. I like the way it was shot. Sometimes it almost had a documentary type feel to it. All the actors were excellent and it was a very interesting story that I knew very little about.
2 Stars Not all that
Finally broke down and watched this flick. Almost everybody I know said it was a great film. It obviously did well at the Oscars and with such a stellar cast, I added all of the above together and figured this was a cant miss movie.
First let me say that I am male and I am straight. But I do believe in equal rights for all so my negative feelings about this movie are just that..feelings about this movie, not the movement for equal rights.
The pro’s of this movie were few imo. The acting was absolutely stellar. Sean Penn never ceases to amaze me. I can not say enough about how well Penn played the role of Milk. Franco was excellent as well and they did do a good job in the film of showing why their relationship deteriorated yet how and why they still stayed so ‘close’ after they ’split up’.
I would love to say I thought Brolins acting was stellar as well but I cant and that is a major negative to this movie. I cant say Brolins acting was bad either…again, a major negative. The fact is, Brolin was a CRITICAL character in this movie obviously, as he is the one who killed the Mayor and Harvey, yet we barely even got to know his character. Very little screen time for him and again, such a critical character, yet they did not let us get to know this character very well or let his character ‘develop properly’ so viewers had a better idea of what was driving his character. Very disappointed that Brolin got such litle screen time and viewers really did not ‘get to know the character, his ideas, views and etc’. In fact, I cant really think of any movie in which one of the most critical charcaters was left so ‘undeveloped’ in the script/movie.
The other pro’s were it was nice to see plenty of real life clips from the 70’s and from the areas in the film…You almost felt like you were time warping back to Castro Street in the 70’s……
The cons. I can see why Penn may have been nominated for some awards as his acting was simply stellar, but why did this movie get so much acclaim? Yes, I know it is a true story, but they could have made this less ‘boring’ somehow. Run time is approx 2 hours. When I was about 30 - 45 minutes in, it felt more like 2 or 3 hours. After an hour I found myself questioning why everybody loved this film as every minute seemed like and hour. Boring is what it was, imo, but I do realize I am in the minority here as judged by the reviews, oscar nominations and etc….but yes, I found this to be very boring and wishing the end would hurry up and get here.
Since it was true and since I personally never knew harvey milk, I must assume that Penn did a good job or portraying who he was in real life..how he acted and etc….With true stories you cant change the character in to something different, as it then becomes not true. But if that is really how harvey milk acted in his real life, I can only say he was a cooky nutcase and although it is awesome he was the first gay public officer voted in to office, the guy was a nut..a cooky guy..and if I had known him, I would not have voted for him..again, nothing about the equal rights thing..I just think we have some serious issues with who we vote in to public offices and milk was a bit nutty to garner my vote.
Great acting…cool flashbacks to the 70’s….but far too boring for me. Not a movie I would watch a 2nd time so no need to own it. Worth a watch, but borrow it or rent it before buying..if you loved it..then buy it…if you found it to be too boring and will never watch it again, why buy it unless you get it in the ‘bargain bin’ as I did for $2.
5 Stars Stellar biographical film of a great man.
Harvey Milk was a hero, for both the gay and civil rights movements. As an African American lesbian, I thought that Harvey Milk’s progressive political stance, was particularly relevant to those like me. He was willing to put everything on the line, to fight for all oppressed people. It seemed to me that when Milk was fighting for justice in the 70s and 80s, politicians were way more committed to their constituents, than they are today. This was certainly the case, with the political activism of Harvey Milk.
Harvey Milk let nothing stand in his way, in his pursuit of his ideals. We desperately need more politicians like him, in our very troubled era. Rights for minorities, gay and lesbians, women, working people, etc., have been under attack by the right-wing political machine, in recent years. The time is right, for another progressive leader, to take a serious stand on civil rights for all, like Harvey Milk had the courage to do when he was alive.
Sean Penn’s performance as Harvey Milk, is a prime example of his superb talent as an actor. Penn shows a real finesse, for conveying Harvey Milk’s mannerisms, passionate political convictions, and dedication to the cause for justice, for the underdogs in society.
Josh Brolin as Dan White, turns in a muted, yet deeply resonate performance. Though not as marvelously talented as Sean Penn, Brolin has a terse, brooding charisma, that can’t be ignored.
Harvey Milk was a bold, brave man, who deserves to be remembered as such. This film does justice to Harvey Milk’s memory, and to those that want to see the honorable man that Harvey Milk was, and what he stood for.
4 Stars van Sant gets a year’s supply of free cookies for this one.
Milk (Gus van Sant, 2008)
When I started watching Milk, Gus van Sant’s biopic of San Francisco city supervisor, I wasn’t quite sure about it. The film opens with Milk (Sean Penn) dictating, essentially, his memoirs onto a series of cassettes in case he is assassinated. I wasn’t quite sure how van Sant was going to work the time factor into this (given how the movie ends–and we all know how it ends, right? If not, be warned, this review may contain spoilers), but he ended up doing it quite well. One can never be quite sure what one is going to get with a Gus van Sant film, but Milk is far closer on the sliding scale of quality to Drugstore Cowboy than it is to Psycho. (And as Captain Peacock was wont to say, “Thank Heaven for that.”)
The first half of Milk traces the final years of Harvey Milk’s life, from his relocation to San Francisco with partner Scott Smith (An American Crime’s James Franco) through his days as a political activist to his election as city supervisor. The second half zeroes in on the final weeks, as Milk tries to play politics with rabid antigay conservative Dan White (No Country for Old Men’s Josh Brolin), elected supervisor for the next district over on the same day Milk rose to power. Along the way, we get to know the backstories of a number of others instrumental in Milk’s rise to power, including Cleve Jones (Speed Racer’s Emile Hirsch), who would go on to create the AIDS quilt; Jack Lira (Y Tu Mama Tambien’s Diego Luna), whom Milk dated after Smith left him (and who was, in many ways, the impetus for the events of Milk’s final days); and Anne Kronenberg (Allison Pill, recently fo Dan in Real Life), who is still involved in San Francisco politics to this day.
While the movie does have a plot (and a more compelling plot than a lot of recent movies not based on true stories), it never fails to remain aggressively character-driven, and because of that the movie lives or dies by the performances of the actors involved. Every time I’ve seen Sean Penn offscreen for the past decade or so, he seems more and more like a personal train wreck (his Oscar speech accepting the Best Actor award for this film was horrifyingly incoherent), but it’s been impossible to deny his power as an actor for close to thirty years now. I’ve loved many of Penn’s performances, from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Mystic River, but for me his landmark performance has always been in the 1983 prison drama Bad Boys. This is the first time I’ve seen him eclipse that. He absolutely, positively nails this role to the wall. On the flip side of the coin is Josh Brolin, whose career has been the polar opposite of Penn’s, from the woeful The Goonies through some of Hollywood’s worst disasters in recent memory (Hollow Man, The Mod Squad, Into the Blue). No Country for Old Men was a revelation where Brolin was concerned, and Milk just ups the ante. While saying Brolin has never given a performance this good would be damning with faint praise, I don’t mean it like that at all; he is almost as powerful as Penn here. The rest of the principals are equally good at making us love or hate them, depending (Diego Luna is just loathsome here, as he was meant to be). The main cast are helped out by a slew of phenomenal performances from actors in minor roles; 21 Grams’ Dennis O’Hara reunites with Penn here as John Briggs, Milk’s biggest public nemesis, while Legally Blonde’s Victor Garber couldn’t be better as George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg; this isn’t Cecil B. DeMille, but it’s at least a cast of hundreds, and everyone with a speaking role is fine here.
The direction is equally stunning. Van Sant’s passion for the source material is evident in every frame (he’s been trying to get an adaptation of Randy Shilts’ biography, The Mayor of Castro Street, off the ground for almost twenty years; it looks as if that may actually happen now). People often say that attention to small details doesn’t make a difference in a movie. Maybe in some cases they’re right, but I think in this case it’s indicative of Van Sant’s dedication to the source material; his use, for example, of the real Castro Camera and Harvey Milk’s actual apartment may only contribute to the film in an intangible way, but I think those intangibles are reflected in the performances of the actors. (As well, a number of the actual people portrayed in the film have cameos, including Dan White’s son Chris, Cleve Jones, and Danny Nicoletta). That has to have some effect on what happens behind the scenes, don’t you think? In any case, it’s hard to argue with success, and whatever the reason, Milk gives us both a director and a stable of actors who are all on top of their collective game here. Almost unanimously named by critics as one of the best movies of 2008, and I’m inclined to agree. ****
5 Stars sad and wonderful story
this movie tells a true story of what happened in the 1970’s. its sad but true and marked a great movement in america’s history. i think every one should see this at lease once in there life.
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