A group of homeless men stage a sit-in at a city library in Emilio Estevez’s high-minded but underwhelming drama
A lot of very big guns are wheeled on to make a weirdly muffled and underwhelming bang in this stately, high-minded feature from Emilio Estevez, shot in the (impressive) location of Cincinnati public library, which incidentally gives the film the odd look of something shot by documentarist Frederick Wiseman.
The story feels as if it is based on a real incident, but isn’t – or rather only in the sense that it reportedly had its genesis in a news story Estevez read 13 years ago about how
American public libraries were becoming de facto daytime shelters for the homeless. He sets out to imagine what would happen if these people staged a protest about funding, and this has been a passion project Estevez has been developing since then.