Even if you don’t know the true story behind the heartwarming and uplifting “Ordinary Angels,” I can’t think of a single plot development that will surprise you and sometimes that’s OK. Sometimes it’s enough to sit back and settle in for a Comfort Viewing Movie that reminds us that even in these dark and stressful times, there are a lot of true and decent people out there who are capable of doing miraculous things.
Also, it doesn’t hurt if you have a two-time Oscar winner and a hunky streaming series star as the leads, and the co-writer of the screenplay is the writer-director of “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” one of the best films of 2023.
Set in small-town Kentucky in the early 1990s (cue “Hard to Handle” by the Black Crowes), “Ordinary Angels” hits us with the heartache from the get-go, as the stoic but honorable Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson aka “Reacher”) says goodbye to his wife Theresa (Amy Acker) as she succumbs to a rare blood vessel disorder. Cut to a local bar, where the hard-partying hairdresser Sharon Stevens (Hilary Swank) is downing enough shots to put a linebacker in the hospital, and we quickly learn that’s just a Tuesday for Sharon.
Sharon is careening through life with no sense of purpose — but that changes when she happens upon a newspaper article telling the story of how Ed’s youngest daughter Michelle (Emily Mitchell) was in dire need of a liver transplant and the family was drowning in debt. Sharon takes it upon herself to start raising funds for the family, without consulting Ed. That’s her way. As Sharon puts it, she’s not particularly good at taking no for an answer.
With Hilary Swank going full Erin Brockovich with the tight outfits and the big hair and the broad accent, “Ordinary Angels” starts ticking off the plot-point boxes. Even as Sharon goes through the ritual of emptying out all the liquor bottles in her home and attending meetings, we know there’s a relapse coming. With Ed’s country mom Barbara (Nancy Travis) offering down-home morsels of wisdom from the sidelines, Sharon grows close with Michelle and her older sister Ashley (Skywalker Hughes), becoming a kind of mother figure. (Thankfully, there’s no romance shoehorned into the story.)
Wearing his Kentucky Wildcats baseball cap and his flannels, working endless hours as a roofer, Ed barely grunts more than a handful of words at a time, but we know the moment is going to come when he thanks Sharon for all her help but tells her to back off, he’s got this. Except, of course, he doesn’t. When the biggest snowstorm in Kentucky hits just as the call comes that Michelle can get her liver transplant but the hospital is 700 miles away, only Sharon can find a way to rally the community to somehow make this happen.
Directed by Jon Gunn (“The Case for Christ,” “Do You Believe?”) from a screenplay by Kelly Fremon Craig of “Are You There God?” and the actor-writer Meg Tilly, “Ordinary Angels” will be categorized as a “faith-based” film, and I suppose that’s accurate. That said, there are only a few passing sequences set in church or dealing with spirituality. The angels here are wearing parkas and shoveling snow and donating their hard-earned cash and doing anything else they can to help a little girl.
