Blu-ray Review: Milk

May as well wait for the special edition

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Tuesday, March 10th 2009 at 12:25 AM

Universal's Blu-ray release of Milk is surprisingly limited in most every way. The film detailing the life of Harvey Milk went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black) and yet all we have here are three mediocre featurettes and the film itself. I can't say I am overly disappointed since I do believe Milk carries a great performance from Penn but it isn't all that great of a film on a whole.

I included it as an Honorable Mention in my top ten of 2008 article and much of what I said there rings true upon second viewing:

I have a feeling this film will slowly lose my favor over repeated viewings as it will serve as a first time emotional ride and lose its impact as time goes by. Thus its placement in the Honorable Mention category and I almost considered leaving it out altogether.

I didn't know how the story of Harvey Milk came to a conclusion, which is to say I knew of the conclusion, but not the causing factors when I saw the film in the theater. This fact only bolstered the film's emotional impact on me as Penn's performance as the first openly gay man elected to public office in America is the film's guiding light. It is a perfect performance and one that could have gone drastically wrong had Penn played it at any one moment over the top. However, I never fell in love with the way the story was told on a whole. Milk's personal relationships are a major portion of the story, but I never felt the transitions worked. Milk's personal life, while important, takes the viewer out of the movie for a second before we get back to what does work, and because of this watching the film a second time just isn't as enjoyable.

As for this Blu-ray release you get the typical quality Universal presentation with an impressive video transfer and DTS audio track, which is hardly necessary considering this isn't a sound driven film, but the rally scenes certainly do give your living room a mild "being there" ambiance. The supplements is where this release is lacking as it comes with one featurette with the cast and crew talking about the story of Milk, another where the real life contributors reflect on the story and a third focusing on the casting of the rally scenes with conversations with some of the folks that were there and remember it. And that's it. Perhaps these features would have been better had they included archival footage, but as it stands the features simply used scenes from the film while interviewees reflected back on Harvey's life. This made each feature feel just like an unnecessary extension of the film rather than any kind of necessary additional information.

A commentary track or perhaps even an authentic 30 minute-or-so documentary on Harvey Milk without the scripted flourishes would have made this release more appealing, but I think we can all count on a "special edition" release with more goodies and most likely a commentary track or two as I expect Dustin Lance Black will be ready to sit down with director Gus Van Sant to talk about their film that won a pair of Oscars.

This is one time I believe the features would have helped sell me on a release, but with what is available here I don't think this is a movie that is necessarily worth owning since I can't imagine it is one most people will watch all that often. Perhaps when a second edition arrives with additional features it will be more worth your money, but for now it's a rental.