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Its a good film but its not in my top five and it shouldn't make my top ten. The film is good, or should I say Sean Penn is really good in the film. The writing, directing, and editing of the film is why I don't consider the film to be the best picture of the year. The film tries to hard to be several different types of genres, at first you think the film will be a romance and based on James Franco's performance it really should have been. The film then moves into a political film but rather then go into the politics the film steers away from that and only gives us cursory look at the events of the time. Finally the film could have been a thriller, there is an underlying darkness to the story of Harvey Milk but once again the film pulls back and doesn't deliver any real Hitchcockian thrills the failure to capture any of these tones is the fault of Gus Van Sant which considering his history isn't surprising, the failure to establish a focus of the film is the editors. The other problem I had with the film was the writing, Milk is not a complex character he is treated almost Messianic we only get glimpses of his faults. Also the actual layout of scenes was very cliched, we get over the top symbolism, we get the big speeches, we get the gathering of the cast, we get the same political conversations that I've seen over the over again. Perhaps its unfair to judge a film based on its predecessors such as And the Band Played On, Angels in America, Philadelphia, Capote Brokeback Mountain and Before Night Falls but those films had a focus.

But with those negative comments the film is still good. Visually it is an appealing, the film captures the period of the 70's very well and the inserts of documentary footage offer a good feel to the film. Emile Hirsch and James Franco are absolutely fantastic in the film. Both allow for their characters to exude complexity and depth in a few scenes which is more then I can say for Deigo Luna whose character needed to be flushed out more to make him more then a parody. James Brolin is always great but we don't get enough into Dan Brown's character to make him feel fully three dimensional.

I would give the film a B