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Penn is Hot, 'Milk' is Cold

Check out Mike Ward and Daniel Neman go head-to-head on "Milk" in Showtime Showdown .

"Milk" is one of those movies you keep rooting for, keep hoping it will get a little better, a little more entertaining. But at the end, it's just a little too flat. Or sour, I should say.



Don't get me wrong, "Milk" is a likeable movie. But it's not the great movie early Oscar prognosticators have made it out to be. That's not fault of Sean Penn , who certainly delivers an Oscar-worthy performance of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay American to be elected to public office. The problem is that the supporting characters are missing faces on the side of a milk carton: Emilie Hirsch and James Franco are decent enough actors, but need to be given more than tight jeans, floppy curls and puppy dog eyes to get them over. They need screen time…and purpose.

We meet Milk in 1978 as he's speaking into a tape recorder, offering a big screen soliloquy about his journey from closeted insurance salesman to reluctant gay rights activist to groundbreaking politician.   The recordings are made somewhere near the eve of Milk's assassination – I'm really not giving anything away here – and these monologue scenes serve as transitions as we trace through the last few years of his life.

Along the way we meet Milk's one-dimensional lovers played by Franco and Diego Luna. We're there when Milk tries to stave off police brutality and becomes the The Mayor of Castro Street, the tiny San Francisco neighborhood that was the sparkplug for the gay rights movement. And we're thrust into political turmoil brought on by bible-beating bigots Anita Bryant (played by her awful self in archival footage) and Sen. John Briggs ( Denis O'Hare ), and their championing of Proposition 6.

When Milk is elected as a San Francisco supervisor – it takes several attempts – he goes toe to toe with conservative supervisor Dan White ( Josh Brolin ). The "W" star shows hints of something really good, but again, isn't given enough scenes to flesh out his character and become the foil to Milk that he's meant to be. Because of that, a scene that's supposed to be a big confrontation between the two men, which occurs at Milk's birthday party, comes off awkward. Very awkward. More awkward then it would be watching "Milk" beside the pope.

Yes, there is enough gay heat in the movie to pasteurize Richard Simmons' swimming pool – and allegedly the longest man-on-man kiss of any mainstream movie. (My DVD player is now gay – and begging for a "Queer as Folk" box set for Christmas). I credit Director Gus Van Sant for keeping it real and authentic and not diluting the tone to possibly make a bigger box office grab.

Without Penn, "Milk" could have been an empty, unpolished bio-epic about an important man and an even more important movement. Just as Milk said, "I'm not the candidate. The movement is the candidate." As it is, "Milk" is a solid movie at least worth skimming through.

"Milk," with a running time of 128 minutes, is rated R and is now playing in Richmond and select cities.

Mike give "Milk" two and a half stars out of four stars.

Mike Ward is a Richmond-based freelance writer and editor. Check him out at www.underdogcopy.com .