Director Gus Van Sant plunges into the biographical drama "Milk" from a jumping off point that both embraces and defies convention, beginning the film by capturing the moment of Harvey Milk's birth -- at age 40. After a brief bookend segment that shows Harvey committing his memories to audio cassette, the camera watches him collide with a handsome stranger on the stairs of a subway station in New York City. Harvey senses something that Van Sant leaves to our imagination and impulsively hits on "Scott from Mississippi," begging to not be left alone on his birthday. Later that night, Harvey confesses to Scott that, "I haven't done a thing that I'm proud of," completing his emergence into a brave new world by sweeping the first four decades of his existence under the rug.

The movie, which was written by Dustin Lance Black, goes forward in time from that meeting without sparing another thought for the past that Harvey Milk himself apparently disowned. That permits Black and Van Sant to focus on their protagonist's unusually eventful final years, when the real-life Milk decided to banish his mid-life regrets by entering politics, eventually becoming a San Francisco city supervisor for 11 months in 1978, the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the United States. The focus is even deeper than you might think, since Milk's public service and his life were cut short at age 48 by a political rival and former fellow supervisor who murdered both Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

The filmmakers' strongest asset is a deeply committed performance by Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. Most people probably won't know whether Penn looks or sounds much like the guy he's playing, but nobody's going to look at the screen and see the star instead of the character. And though doing "gay" is a trap for many actors, Penn's approach never for a moment feels cartoonish or insincere. Perhaps most importantly, he generates a healthy wattage of the charisma that's essential to politics: Penn's Milk looks and sounds like a man people would listen to.

There are other fine performances, in particular from James Franco, as subway crush Scott (who stayed with Milk for several years), and Josh Brolin as Dan White, the ex-cop whose own city supervisor election -- followed by an abrupt resignation over pay issues -- eventually led to a remorse that found its tragic outlet in a police-issue revolver.

There are aspects of "Milk" that feel a little soggy. Some of the cast, like Diego Luna as Jack Lira, Milk's late-in-life boyfriend, don't have much to work with. And while Penn's performance is true, the only flaw that the filmmakers find in Harvey Milk is the same tragic shortcoming that we assign to all of our martyred saints: He worked too hard for The Cause. It feels disingenuous to suggest, as the movie does, that all of Milk's personal problems were simply the result of noble and too-dogged devotion to his activism.

Harvey Milk liked to say that his aim was to recruit his listeners. The movie Milk may not change your views, but you won't regret hearing him out.

A-

Milk

Director: Gus Van Sant

Cast: Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Alison Pill

Running time: 2 hrs., 8 min.

Rating: R for language, some sexual content and brief violence

Location: Opens Friday in Salt Lake County