The time is the present. The place is Cincinnati. The city is in the middle of a frigid winter of record-setting low temperatures. A group of sixty homeless men are so desperate for shelter that they decide to hold a demonstration and stay overnight on the third floor of the downtown Cincinnati Public Library. This film is their story.

"The Public" had good intentions in depicting the realities of the homeless in America. Many of the men were recovering vets. Several were struggling with mental disease. Others were simply broke. An opioid victim was the son of the police detective in charge of ending the standoff in the library. The villain of the film is a mean-spirited and self-service district attorney running for mayor, who has no sympathy for the homeless.

As the film progressed, it struggled to make credible why there would be a police brigade preparing to rush the library and arrest the homeless men. The detective in charge of the operation (Alec Baldwin) was an especially unconvincing character because he was supposed to be a negotiator, but he did no bargaining with the men inside. A cliché newscaster intentionally distorts the situation for the public in order to raise her network's ratings.

The most moving part of the film was when the protagonist, an unassuming library supervisor, reads aloud to the news reporter a passage from John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," connecting the misery of the Great Depression of the 1930s to the homeless condition afflicting thousands in the twenty-first century.

It was said in the film that a library is "the last bastion of a true democracy." Those noble words are meaningful. But the film was unsuccessful in delivering a pragmatic message about how to effectively solve a social ill that is not being addressed in large American cities today.

It's the middle of the winter in Cincinnati, and there's a killing freeze. At the main public library, the homeless are looking for a litle warmth, as well as a way to fill their days. One of the senior librarians, Emilio Estevez, doesn't them them out into the deadly cold. Instead, he lets them stay overnight, and stays with them, as aspiring politician Christian Slater tries to get the police to turn it into a law-and-order coup for him, and police negotiator Alec Baldwin tries to understand what is going on.

It's Estevez' sixth movie as director, and his first film appearance in eight years, and it's simultaneously hopeful, depressing and inspiring, with Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH frequently referenced. It's also a fine piece of film making, with something to say about many of the subjects that concern people who still like to think with head and feel with their hearts: the purpose and survival of libraries, the mental health crisis, the inability and unwillingness of society to deal with its issues. Estevez's performance is low-key, and affecting, letting the situation and his despair leak into the audience. Other fine performances include Gabrielle Union as a TV news reporter looking for an easily understood narrative, Geoffrey Wright as Estevez' sympathetic and beleaguered boss, and Rhymefest as one of the mentally ill homeless.

Homelessness is an issue that doesn't get addressed enough in movies, which makes "The Public" all that much better. The focus on both libraries (places of knowledge and learning) and class makes Emilio Estevez's movie one that everyone should see.