Harvey Milk deserved a better film than this.

Director Gus Van Sant's hagiography remains true to the facts of its subject's life while backing away from invoking the full-on, living color injustice, violence, passion, nerve, and sheer scruffy grassroots rage that fueled Milk and the emerging post-Stonewall Gay liberation movement.

Not that it doesn't try, kind of. All the right things happen, plot-wise -- a formerly closeted Milk starts a new, out life in 70s-era San Francisco...