Ordinary Angels

The Plot: After his wife passes away, Ed (Alan Ritchson) is not quite the same man anymore. He becomes more withdrawn, not helped by a worrying diagnosis for his youngest daughter Michelle (Emily Mitchell). In time, she will need a lung transplant and is on a donor list. Hospital bills and other payments start stacking up, burying him deeper into debt. Enter the force of nature that is Sharon (Hilary Swank), a hairdresser with an alcohol problem. A friend stages an intervention and Sharon gets the message that she needs to do something worthwhile. She takes a more than active interest in Michelle, much to Ed’s surprise. She rallies the local community together to give Ed and Michelle a fighting chance…

The Verdict: Taken at face value, Ordinary Angels could be the kind of tearjerker that cynics might scoff at for being somewhat implausible given that it has a lot of moving parts. A disease-of-the-week TV movie involving a father and his very ill young child that somehow got lucky by landing an A-list actor in Hilary Swank that led to its promotion to a theatrical release. Add in a faith-based element, a popular trend in American films these days, and it has the potential to have sentimental American guff written all over it. Not quite, so cynics might want to hold off with their knives. There’s another element at work here: it’s based on a true story that occurred in rural Kentucky from 1993 – 1994. The kind of story where truth is stranger than fiction, but also an acceptable truth about the power of a community of people pulling together at a time of crisis.

It has some decent talent at work in the writing department which lends the script some grounded credibility. Actor Meg Tilly (Psycho II) makes her feature screenwriting debut, helped along by Kelly Fremon Craig who had some notable success last year with the charming ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’. The duo build up a story of two contrasting personalities between Ed and Sharon. Ed is just living day-to-day, mired in debt but keeping his chin up that things might change. Sharon has personal issues of her own, but her life philosophy is to just say yes to a problem and then figure out how to work around it. For Sharon, there’s an answer to everything – even a critically-ill child where fate has not been kind. The script does a decent job of selling the well-meaning nosiness of Sharon, as Ed gradually comes to realise that she’s helping herself along in the process. These are flawed characters still finding out about themselves, but deep down they have good hearts.

So far, so sentimental then. What elevates this film slightly above the weepy norm though is the performance of Hilary Swank. She works overtime here to really get at the character of Sharon, who is something of a hot mess. When focused on saving Michelle, she has great organisational skills and a curious ability to persuade the right kind of people. As watchable as ever, Swank brings just the right amount of quirkiness and humour, while keeping the serious nature of the situation in check. Hulking ‘Reacher’ star Alan Ritchson might not be the most obvious choice to play a grieving father, but he does a nice line in vulnerability and hope. Jon Gunn does a competent job with the director’s megaphone, avoiding the cliched romance angle. This is welcome given the more predictable elements at play including a climactic, tense race against time.

Ordinary Angels is perhaps unlikely to win any awards, content with just being a pleasant feel-good film about the power of people to effect change for good. It’s a simple and unassuming film that earns its wings. It’s really held together by the script and the two leads though. Sometimes that’s all that’s required for a film to work on a gut level and tug convincingly at the heartstrings. Three hankies out of five.

Rating: 3 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor