In the book "The Mayor of Castro Street," Randy Shilts writes that the 1978 shooting deaths of Harvey Milk and George Moscone happened so fast that the police had to pluck a still-burning cigarette from the fingers of San Francisco Mayor Moscone.

Although Shilts' biography isn't the source of the film "Milk," starring Sean Penn, it confirms the trailblazer's belief that he would never live to be 50. "There's just something sinister down the road. I don't know what it is, but it's there," Milk once said.

As it turned out, the something sinister was a fellow supervisor or councilman named Dan White (Josh Brolin), a former policeman and firefighter who increasingly became the odd man out in political circles. Their friendship soured, ending in tragedy all around.

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'Milk'

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

• Starring: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, James Franco.
• Rating: R for language, some sexual content and brief violence.
• Web site: 'Milk'

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"Milk," directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black from HBO's "Big Love," celebrates the life of the first openly gay man to be voted into major public office in America.

Penn, with darkened, wavy and slightly thinning hair and a softening of the hard edges he shows to the press, portrays Milk with conviction, charm and charisma. He is as playful as he is passionate, making it clear why his call to arms -- "My name is Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you" -- echoed beyond the streets of San Francisco.

If I were asked to name a favorite actor, Penn's name invariably comes to mind. Who else could, in the span of a couple of years, portray a Boston grocer out of his mind with grief over his murdered daughter in "Mystic River," Willie Stark in "All the King's Men" and a gay man whose death prompted 40,000 people to take to the streets with flickering candles in hand?

The movie covers the final eight years of Milk's life, starting in New York City in 1970 when he meets Scott Smith (James Franco, with bad hair but a flawless performance), the boyfriend who accompanies him to San Francisco and shares his early struggles. They open a camera store in the Castro district, where Milk and Smith are met with hostility or outright hatred from fellow merchants and policemen but slowly begin to turn the tide.

Much as movies about African-American pioneers filter the civil rights movement through one man or group of people, "Milk" literally and figuratively puts a face or faces on the gay-rights movement. In addition to Milk, it introduces Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), a seemingly callow newcomer who becomes an activist and later helped to create the AIDS Quilt.

"Milk" tracks campaigns, breakups -- sometimes due to nonstop electioneering -- the rise of Anita Bryant and her anti-gay campaign, the battle over a California measure that would have allowed the firing of gay school teachers, the double murders and the subsequent community outpouring.

Although more by accident than design, there are many echoes of today, from Milk's message about hope to California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage.

Unless they're documentary devotees, most people don't go to the movies on a Friday night for a history lesson. They go to be entertained, maybe enlightened, and "Milk" does that.

Although Van Sant smartly cast Brolin, who is having a heck of a year and looks like White, he keeps him at arm's length. Granted, the movie is called "Milk," but White's motives for turning to violence are inadequately explored (although a few jelly beans on a desk seem a sly nod to his "Twinkie Defense").

The movie, which weaves in some archival footage to heighten the reality, is a celebration of an ordinary but tenacious man whose life was cut short but whose extraordinary example and influence live on.