Milk

A film about a city councillor in San Francisco in the 1970s? Surely not. Put that way, the premise of Milk doesn't sound like an entertaining evening's cinema. There's a bit more to Harvey Milk's story than that, though.

Milk was probably the first openly gay elected politician in the western world. It's strange to think how much has changed in only 30 years (it's really not much of a story that the Prime Minister of Iceland, or several members of the British Cabinet are, these days). The film does a good job of taking us back in time to early 70s California - so good in fact that its really rather difficult to tell apart the archive footage that is spliced into the film.

The film does a remarkable job of maintaining the tension leading up to Milk's assassination in spite of the fact that the ending is known from the start - a remarkable achievement really. Nonetheless, it did feel as if the relationship between Milk and his assassin, Dan White, was skipped over by the film. It is implied that White may have been a closet homosexual himself (I have no idea how much evidence there is for this one way or the other - always one of the dangers of making films based on real-life events) but the film ends up hinting at this and then moving on. It also entirely fails to explain why White shot not only Milk but San Francisco mayor George Moscone. It ends up feeling as if the real action is happening off-screen.

Nonetheless, it's well worth seeing, not least for Sean Penn's standout performance as Milk. He gets the camp mannerisms just right - neither lapsing into caricature nor obliterrating them entirely. If Mickey Rourke doesn't pick up the best actor gong at the Oscars next week, then I think it would be an injustice if Penn didn't get it either.