Milk

Milk is by all means a good film. However sadly I think the film is too ambitious to accept being just "good". It fails in its attempt to be great. If I am making any sense here I don't know. What I am trying to say is that while Milk is engaging and enjoyable it is not something to think about afterwords.
The performances in the film are uniformly good. Senn Penn does a phenomenal job at convincing us that he is a nice guy. James Franco takes on the role usually reserved for the woman (Laura Linney in "Kinsey", Reese Whitherspoon in "Walk the Line", Kery Washington in "Ray"): the beautiful, sweet, wonderful, love interest. Diego Luna is the beautiful, self destructive,crazy, less wonderful love interest ( Regina King in "Ray",Ginnifer Goodwin " Walk the Line"). Josh Brolin is the sympathetic but totally nutso eventual assassin. The wisecracking sidekick with an occasional dramatic moment is Emile Hersh. The strong successful lone female is Alison Pill ( a favorite of mine). From my descriptions of the characters you have probably gathered my main qualm with the film. With the exception of a few good protests scene and one great catch phrase ( I'm Harvey Milk and I'm here to RECRUIT YOU!) there isn't much we haven't seen before. Another problem that I had was that the fact That Harvey wasn't killed because of his sexual orientation but because of personal reasons between him and Josh Brolin's character was never fully addressed. I know it is a true story but I had a hard time with the fact that Harvey's death had little to do with his life. I simply didn't find Harvey very interesting. Likable but not interesting. The movie makes him so wonderful to the point that he becomes completely dull. My first grade teacher was a lovely woman but I wouldn't watch a movie a bout her. The movie needed to show more of Harvey's flaws. If it had done so it would have made him more interesting and thus more endearing.

3 out of 4 stars.