It’s been a long time since most audiences last saw Emilio Estevez. For most fans the last film was 1993’s Judgment Night, where Estevez led a great cast that included Denis Leary in his big breakout year, Cuba Gooding, Jr. just after his stint in A Few Good Men, and Jeremy Piven first showing audiences that smarm charm we’d later see a whole lot more of in Entourage (if you haven’t seen Judgment Night, it’s a thriller worth seeing). Usually a good guy and straight arrow, we’d also see him as suave and cocky as he became a household name and stayed that way for an entire decade, from 1982 to 1993.
Estevez starred in a memorable movies like Tex, The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire, Maximum Overdrive, Stakeout, Young Guns, Freejack, and The Mighty Ducks. He then took the reins as writer, director, and actor twelve years ago in a lesser known film, a biopic of the Bobby Kennedy assassination called Bobby, and he’s finally back–performing the filmdom triple threat again in the independent drama The Public. The first trailer for the film is out and it looks great. A film chock full of genre greats, The Public will see Estevez exploring issues such as homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction as a group of homeless people in downtown Cincinnati take shelter after hours in the public library when extreme winter conditions strike. Who hasn’t asked the question, why some government program couldn’t be arranged to use a few public buildings after hours to help the homeless?
Estevez plays Stuart Goodson, the head librarian, Alec Baldwin (Mission: Impossible series, The Departed, Malice, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Hunt for Red October, Beetlejuice, Knots Landing) plays a crisis negotiator for the Cincinnati police department, Jena Malone (The Hunger Games series, Sucker Punch, Into the Wild, Pride & Prejudice, Donnie Darko, Ellen Foster) plays the assistant librarian, Jeffrey Wright (James Bond series, Westworld, The Good Dinosaur, Lady in the Water, Syriana, The Manchurian Candidate, Shaft, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Homicide) plays Mr. Anderson, Richard T. Jones (Event Horizon, Collateral, Phone Booth, Godzilla, Super 8, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Judging Amy) is Chief Edwards, Gabrielle Union (Deep Space Nine, Life, Night Stalker) plays a local reporter, Michael Kenneth Williams (Assassin’s Creed, Ghostbusters, Boardwalk Empire, RoboCop, Community, Law & Order, The Wire) plays a homeless man who leads the sit-in, Taylor Schilling (Argo, Orange is the New Black, Dark Matter) plays Angela, Christian Slater (Mr. ROBOT, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Young Guns II) plays the assistant district attorney, and Jacob Vargas (Luke Cage, Medium, Psych, Burn Notice, Death Race, Flight of the Phoenix, Crimson Tide) is the head of security at the library.
Check out this trailer for Emilio Estevez’s The Public:
Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Punisher, Atomic Blonde, John Wick, Conan the Barbarian, Watchmen, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Halloween, Sucker Punch, Get Carter) is composing the score for the film.
The Public will premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on January 31, 2018, and will hopefully generate buzz to merit a full nationwide release later this winter.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
