Milk (2008) **

A sanitized version of the life of Harvey Milk, America's first openly gay politician, assassinated in 1978. No mention of the Jonestown tragedy (which occurred only a week before Milk's killing), only a bizarre reference to Kool-Aid. Harvey Milk emerges as a saint, a gay hero for straight audiences, who can embrace him without cringing and without questioning their prejudices. Sean Penn's performance is excellent (no surprise here), but the film's best scenes deal with the Anita Bryant/John Briggs crusades against gay rights in the 1970's and Milk's successful efforts to oppose them. Not surprisingly, "Milk'' got an R rating, but I bet that an identical film with the same sexual content - but STRAIGHT sexual content - would only get a PG rating. Harvey Milk deserved better. He deserved a more controversial film, a film that would explore his complex personality with all his flaws and wrinkles, to make his virtues shine even more brightly. Instead, he got a whitewash, a canonization, and a Sunday School version of himself. Watch the Oscar-winning documentary "The Times Of Harvey Milk" instead.