Greenwich Entertainment
Who remembers Emilio Estevez? The Mighty Ducks, right? And that’s really it. I guess you can count The Breakfast Club but that barely matters to me. A decent actor, but you kind of just forgot about him. Who guessed he had this movie in him?
The Public comes from writer/director/star Emilio Estevez, and I am honestly shocked how good it actually was — mainly from a writing and directing perspective. Emilio stars as Stuart Goodson, a manager of sorts in the main Cincinnati public library, where the crazies come and stay, as the movie starts in the realm of light comedy. Many homeless people come during the day, including Jackson (Michael K. Williams from The Wire), and they are varying degrees of lucidity and sanity.
Stuart is a bit of a homebody, but he is sort of friends with coworker Myra (Jena Malone), a do-gooder, and has a mild romantic spark with his building manager Angela (Taylor Schilling). At the same time, there are police captains and detectives, including Alec Baldwin as Detective Bill Ramstead, whose son is out on the street somewhere. There’s also library administrator Josh Davis (a delightfully assholeish Christian Slater) with political aspirations, and the ever constant Jeffrey Wright as the more empathetic admin ‘Anderson’. There’s our cast of characters, but it’s all table setting for the actual plot.
Stuart is being sued for asking a library patron to leave due to his body odor, and ponders his future. On a deliriously cold evening in the city, a ‘cold snap’ as is often mentioned, instead of merely leaving as per usual, Jackson leads a group of homeless men to perform as sort of ‘sit in’. They insist to Stuart that there is no room in any shelter due to the weather, and they will simply leave in the morning. But in the meantime, they will barricade themselves inside.
Stuart, conflicted but morally on their side, does nothing and lets it all happen. So naturally the admins and police are soon involved. Evil Politician Christian Slater gets involved, as does Detective Alec Baldwin, as the ‘negotiations’ begin, led now by an increasingly frustrated and angry Stuart. Outside the library, there is false messaging and political gamesmanship, and people like Angela trying to use technology to show the truth.
Their dialog is crackling, the action and pacing highly effective. These characters, rote in most ways, get elevated due to the underlying themes the movie pushes at us.
It is easy to ignore the plight of the homeless or pretend they aren’t there as you pass them in the street. Easier still to bundle up when it’s cold and never think of anyone else at all. But they are people, yes, often people with mental issues, but people nonetheless. And this crisis of homelessness is still real and present, and there’s no easy answer.
The movie doesn’t pretend to think it has the easy answer either, except for one simple thought: Empathy and understanding. A lot of the movie takes course over a single night, as the tension ebbs and flows and you wonder how it all will end. And luckily, there’s no cop out ending in sight.
I think my favorite sort of indie movies are the ones that surprise me — The Public was legitimately entertaining, with a host of famous names of acting past, delving into some serious issues in a light, engaging manner. This is a good old-fashioned classic weekend watch when you’re looking for something on Netflix. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
The Public has a run time of 1 hour 59 minutes and is rated PG-13 for thematic material, nudity, language, and some suggestive content.
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