I missed this at the cinema, and I had been meaning to see it after all the good things I’d heard about it, so I downloaded it to my iPhone and planned to watch it on the flight back from my holiday in Greece.

I have to confess I wasn’t aware it was based on a true story and rather embarrassingly I also have to confess that I didn’t even know what it was about. All I’d seen was the poster, so just assumed it would be some kind of protest/activist movie – for all I knew it could have been about someone protesting sub-standard milk. As I later found out, it’s the true story of a gay rights activist – Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) who is campaigning to become the first openly gay public official.

The story struggled to keep my attention, but Sean Penn’s amazing portrayal of the character kept me interested enough to see it through to the dramatic ending. And that’s my main problem with this movie – the acting was superb throughout, but the story didn’t enthral me. I could see where it was headed and could predict how it was going to progress.

Sean Penn deserved the Oscar he won for this, and there were some great performances particularly by Josh Brolin who i’d have liked to have seen have a bigger part.

So I’d recommend this if you want to see some great acting, or are particularly interested in learning about the gay civil rights movement in the 70’s, but otherwise I’d give it a miss.