Rating of
2/4
"Milk" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 02/03/16
Milk is the biopic of gay rights activist Harvey Milk who became the first openly gay candidate to be elected to public office in America. As such it tells a very worthwhile story but the fact that it was based on a documentary very much shows; it feels like a series of dramatic reconstructions of events cherry picked from his political life with very little in the way of depth of characterisation or context, giving it the well meaning but rather clumsy and contrived vibe of a TV movie "true life story". But my biggest problem with Milk is its star; to me at least, Sean Penn has always been one of those actors who seems like an actor acting rather than a realistic portrayal of a character and seeing him camping it up in the part of Harvey Milk just failed to convince. Milk is certainly an interesting piece of American political history but as it's lacking in truly engaging narrative drama it's more a piece of edutainment than a satisfying piece of cinema. Plus I think the part of a ground breaking gay rights activist might have been better served by an actor who was actually, y'know, gay.
