A pretty good film, and if you'd never met Harvey Milk, you can be excused for believing Sean Penn captured his personality.

Compelling. Educational. Moving. Somehow, despite having lived in San Francisco for ten years, I did not know that Mayor Moscone and Representative Milk were executed in City Hill by another city Representative (Dan White). This absolutely boggles my mind. It is so unfathomable in what is supposed to be a civilized city in a first world country for something like this to happen. This story alone makes the movie unmissable.

And then there's the gay rights aspect. Sean Penn was solid as Harvey Milk - charismatic, likable, and yes, believably gay.

I really liked the movie, and I thought it did a good job capturing the outrage that San Francisco gays felt at having a mobilized religious right determined to marginalize them.

And despite the disappointing passage of proposition 8 a few months ago, the movie makes it clear that the conversation has shifted. Rational people no longer think that gay, tax paying Americans should be not allowed in certain professions (with a couple absurd exceptions, like Arabic Translator for the military). That the argument is now about marriage is testament to the progress that we've made as a society.

Very well crafted film, with an excellent and deservedly award winning performance by Sean Penn in the title role. Penn's Harvey Milk is a nuanced and complex character, and by no means an archetypal hero. He is at times self-serving, shows distinct egomania, and has a rather predatory approach to both politics and sex. For my money, that makes the character far more fascinating than had the director opted for a sanitized sainthood version of the real Harvey Milk. One of the best films of the year.

First and foremost, I already love Sean Penn. He is one of the most underated actors of our time next to Ed Norton and Joaquin Pheonix, IMHO But this movie was so different for him and very brave I might add of him to do true thespian that he is!

The subject matter is more political than anything, but the character Sean played(Or should I say the real life man)he takes on was gay and full of life, and hope, and energy, and fun. It made me want to know more about Harvey Milk and the cause he started all those years ago.

Excellent movie, a must see.

It is truly a story in our American history to be told, and Sean Penn did an excellent job!

I could not view the DVD due to it would not play on my computer's Blu-Ray Player. I have not had access to a television Blu-Ray player to review.

Watching "Milk," with its historical footage mixed with acted scenes, made me realize just how far we've come since the 1970s and 1980s regarding gay rights and tolerance. Director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black provide this context through their telling of the life of Harvey Milk, a gay man who moved to the Castro in San Francisco during the time when its gay population was first exploding. Even viewers not familiar with Milk's story will know within the first few minutes that Milk will be killed; however, the suspense in this film is not how that will happen, but how Milk will manage to transcend it through his decade of activism.

Sean Penn plays Milk so convincingly and lovingly that it's easy to forget that the role is acted. Penn's Milk is never stereotyped and instead comes across as a passionate, courageous man who has decided that he has no choice but to fight. Other standout performances include James Franco as Scott, Milk's true love; Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien) as wacko, flamboyant, needy Jack; Josh Brolin as repressed and lonely Dan White; Emile Hirsch, as Cleve Jones; and Alison Pill, as Anne Kronenberg. Anita Bryant, in news clips that seem laughable today, comes across as a dangerous force of her time.

Although both gays and lesbians continue to face obstacles on a daily basis, this film drives home just how difficult it was in the years following the otherwise liberating sixties and seventies. The characters in "Milk" yearn to be treated like equal members of society, and their actors imbibe them with such humanity that I would be surprised if their performances don't open a few eyes.

-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

I was expecting much more from this movie as well as Penn, and Franco,
i believe Penn is one of the best actors out there, but this movie was
not up to my expectations at all, the overall acting was poor, the plot
was weak, the direction was lame. Im not saying its not worth watching,
i'm just saying don't have high hopes on it. Highly overrated!! Watch
JFK or Bobby instead!

While Sean Penn has gained the lion share of the praise and his second academy award for his portrayal of the slain gay politician and equal rights leader Harvey Milk, the rest of the cast and director Gus Van Sant are right there with Mr. Penn with their level of excellence. Mr. Van Sant does a superb job of showing the persecution and struggle for equal rights the gay community faced without getting overly preachy and self-righteous. He superbly weaves archival footage into the film and his use of footage showing Anita Bryant spouting her anti-gay rhetoric shows her icy malice with far greater impact than any actress could convey (George Clooney used the same technique with Joseph McCarthy in his film Good Night & Good Luck). Mr. Penn, as he is apt to do, dives completely into the role and transforms himself into Milk while James Franco, Josh Brolin and the rest of the cast provide him with strong support. Milk succeeds in being both informative and entertaining.

This is a fantastic movie. A great depiction of life then. Sean Penn definitely deserved his Oscar for the role he played in the movie.

A good watch and very educational, this is a historical portrayal of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man in America to take politcal office. Milk seems to be the Martin Luther King of the gay community, having pioneered all kinds of gay rights once he got into office as Supervisor of San Francisco, things that affected the entire country. In the 70's and 80's, even in San Francisco gay people faced a lot of verbal and physical abuse. Milk was a groundbreaking guy; he was passionate about what he believed in and faught hard and people rallied around him. Sean Penn did a great job in this role as did Josh Brolin who looked almost exactly like Supervisor Dan White. I had no idea that both Milk and Mayor Moscone were murdered at City Hall by White after he resigned and was not granted his position back.

I would have to classify myself as one of those who knew little about Harvey Milk, other than the fact that he was assassinated with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978 (right after the Jonestown mass suicides in Guyana; Moscone had been getting some heat, as I remember it, because he helped facilitate Jones's rise to political power when he had a church in San Francisco), that he was a forceful gay activist, that their assassin was convicted of manslaughter rather than cold-blooded murder because he had been eating junk food beforehand (the infamous "Twinkie Defense"), and that there were riots in the city when news of the verdict reached the street. It astonished me to learn how little progress gays had made in San Francisco...of all places...by the mid 70's (shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, considering recent events in the Golden State). I had been under the erroneous impression that everything opened up for gays after the Stonewall riots in NY in 1969. Not so. Evidently, in San Francisco and elsewhere in America, even non-gay teachers were in danger of being fired merely for supporting the rights of their gay co-workers to teach. I did vaguely remember that Anita Bryant, actually considered a talented singer by some illustrious critics still, lost her lucrative orange juice gig because of her outspoken homophobia. And that's about all I knew, or remembered. According to this film, Milk was as much a revolutionary for the rights of gay Americans as Malcolm X was a revolutionary for the rights of blacks (if perhaps a bit less abrasive). Sean Penn, as usual, gives an extraordinary performance as a camera salesman originally from Woodmere, Long Island, who was courageous, compassionate, charmingly charismatic, prescient, and, above all else, ordinary, subject to the same defects of character, the same moodiness and flaws, as all other mortal men. Penn's Milk is not the typical Hollywood "hero", without blemish or unbecoming quirks. He's capable of selfishness, telling young aides to call their parents and "come out of the closet, now" without disclosing to them the extent of his own closeted past. For such an in-your-face activist, his past is solidly, conventionally Republican. He's self-involved, sometimes annoyingly oblivious to the needs of others, and by the end of the picture, we're getting indications of emerging arrogance and possible grandiosity. And yet the beauty of this film is that, in spite of his very human liabilities and faults, Milk undeniably was heroic, undeniably was inspiring, and was, in his own way, just as undeniably important and worthy of admiration as Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Gandhi. Whether one is gay or not, Penn's performance is an awe-inspiring achievement, as is the picture, and should be required viewing for all those who truly value human freedom and equality. After so many years of movies and TV shows that celebrate the ugliness and puerility of human beings, it's refreshing indeed to find a film that so magnificently celebrates what's good and positive.

Deserves the Oscar for Best Picture, and Sean Penn for Best Actor. It's a must-see, and one of the best films I've seen in a while.

For those who don't recall this era, Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. -- to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in the late '70s. This is a retrospective of the gay rights movement, and follows Milk's emergence as a spokesman for gay rights who sought political office as a means of promoting change, acceptance, and an end to discrimination. Milk believed in and championed open gayness, and it eventually became the source of his political power. For the unaccustomed, be forewarned that scenes of men kissing start early in the film, which is necessary in order to understand how Milk first met his long-time partner, why Milk moved to S.F. from N.Y., and documents his genuine love for his partner throughout the years.

I had forgotten about the anti-gay crusades by Anita Bryant and John Briggs and the political battles in the U.S., including Calif's. Prop. 6, to try to prohibit gays and supporters of gays from teaching in schools. The film recalls it vividly.

Sean Penn's portrayal of Milk is very believable and sympathetic. Milk is shown to be a caring, intelligent, pragmatic, and moral man (some will disagree, of course, that gays can ever be moral). His well-known and tragic assassination by Dan White still comes as a shock. Few will leave unaffected by Milk's story.

I saw this last weekend in a huge theater where there wasn't a single empty seat. It was packed with all kinds of people, a lot of them jocks with their female dates. Yet everyone seemed moved. It's funny: gay historical figures like Milk are becoming cultural icons, but strangely enough A-list gay actors (or at least out gay actors) in the U.S. are still nonexistent. So you end up with the oddity of seeing a film about a gay icon where the most famous actors have to be at least outwardly straight, and where the vast majority of people who see this will also be straight. But Gus Van Sant played his hand well by casting the movie's leading gay characters with straight actors and some of the straight characters (George Moscone and John Briggs) with gay actors. The result is an even-handed portrait: Milk gets his best advice from his rival Art Agnos, and even his eventual assassin gets in a good line or two about needing a pay raise to feed his family while Milk doesn't have such worries. Milk here isn't some modern St. Sebastian; he's just a guy who wants to do some good in his life. His discovery of the political strategy of declaring your identity, rather than just claiming universal rights, is movingly illustrated. In Sean Penn's amazing performance, Milk is immensely charming but flawed. His knack for recruiting campaign workers is shown to be not entirely unlike his ability to pick up other men. The only heavy-handed moment invites us to compare Milk to an operatic hero--but if you realize that the SF Opera is right next to City Hall, it makes sense. There's no better proof that politics can be joyful theater.