My name is Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and I’m a gay man running for City Supervisor in San Francisco, 1970. Within moments of the film beginning, Scott Smith (James Franco) is a hot guy Milk picks up in a stairwell, sleeps with, an instantly moves in with. This is proof early-on that he can convince anybody – he’s a gentle seducer – he knows what he wants right from the get-go of this film. But while Milk himself isn’t preachy, the film is. Ever since “Brokeback Mountain” put gay men on the map, director Gus Van Sant tackles Milk’s legacy from the moment he announces (in bed with Smith) “I’m forty years old and I haven’t done a thing I’m proud of” all the way through to his death, and never stops shoving it all down our throats. Albeit the film is beautifully shot. But there’s another problem. The movie narrates a long taped opening of Milk’s just-in-case assassination speech into a tape recorder. The movie’s secondary characters are fantastic. Emile Hirsch plays a wise-mouthed kid who Milk convinces to take that attitude and do something with it by working for him. Afterall, he’s not a candidate, but instead, part of a movement. And then there’s Dan White (Josh Brolin) the other Supervisor, a conservative, family man who has issues with Milk’s issues and stews from the other side of the fence. While the acting is Oscar worthy, the problem is that the story doesn’t feel like anything we haven’t seen before, right down to the “Tosca” opera scene reminiscent of another gay struggle with Tom Hanks, in “Philadelphia.” And there’s undoubtedly a lot of “you gotta give ‘em hope” Barack Obama in this film, but that’s okay. More of a reflection of things to come. Penn is outstanding in anything he tackles, but unfortunately “Milk” is a few cookies short a four tiara dunk. Three tiaras
