Review: The Public

On the coldest night of the year, well-meaning Ohio librarian Emilio Estevez gets involved in a sticky situation when a group of homeless people (ostensibly lead by Michael K. Williams) refuse to leave the premises after closing time. Jena Malone is Estevez’s faithful assistant, Jeffrey Wright is Estevez’s conflicted superior, Taylor Schilling plays Estevez’s neighbour, Alec Baldwin is a rational police negotiator, Gabrielle Union plays a soulless reporter, whilst Christian Slater plays a smarmy, self-serving lawyer-turning-politician.

 

Look, I’ll happily defend “Men at Work” any day, but let’s be honest: Emilio Estevez is not a terribly good filmmaker or storyteller. He’s a guy with a bleeding heart and a lot of well-known friends. Here he takes on both directing and screenwriting duties and wastes a pretty damn good cast and a good message. A preachy, message movie version of “Mad City”, Estevez’s heart is in the right place but he’s not good enough of a writer or director to do this thing justice.

 

For starters, through no fault of the actors the homeless characters come across like they just flew the “Cuckoo’s Nest” by way of “The Dream Team”. It’s not a comedy, Estevez just doesn’t afford them a second dimension. Estevez also doesn’t cast himself to his best advantage, he writes and directs with a sledgehammer but actually underplays the lead role into total blandness. The cast around Estevez is pretty good, especially a perfectly cast (but one-dimensional) Christian Slater, and the underrated Jena Malone. Alec Baldwin and Taylor Schilling are fine too, though poor Gabrielle Union’s character barely has a single dimension.

 

Non-liberals will hate it (Alec Baldwin is here for a start), and frankly even lefty’s like myself won’t be able to get around this film’s clichéd, preachy demeanour. It’s heavy-handed and underdone, despite a solid supporting cast who probably should’ve suggested a re-write. It means well, but so what? Even the portrayal of the media here is the same as in a hundred other films of this type.

 

Rating: C

 

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