Ordinary Angels (2024)

Ordinary-Angels-(2024)
Ordinary Angels (2024)

Ordinary Angels

Merely because we know where a movie is going does not mean we won’t have fun getting there. Especially when it boasts a solid script and stars a two time Oscar winner in a role with three of the four elements audiences always love: she’s a mess, she pulls herself together when she finds a heartbreaking story everyone else thinks is hopeless, and she triumphs over seemingly impossible odds.

Oh, come on, that’s not a spoiler. This is BOATS (based on a true story, complete with updates and photos of the real people over the credits), and this movie makes no secret from its first moments that it intends to have us smiling through tears by the end. The contrast between the two words of its title tell us everything we need to know about what will happen.

Hilary Swank plays Sharon, a Louisville hairdresser who co-owns her own salon. She does hair all day and parties all night. When her friend brings her to an AA meeting, she walks out, goes to the store and buys another six-pack. At the cashier stand, Sharon sees a headline in the local paper Michelle, 5 year old girl who just lost her mother, desperately ill. Sharon sees this as an opportunity to help, also an opportunity for care. She goes to the funeral and introduces herself to the family.

Michelle (Emily Mitchell) and her older sister Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) are drawn in by Sharon’s warmth also by the sparkles on her clothes but their father Ed (“Reacher’s” Alan Ritchson), who is devastated shell-shocked broke terrified etc., understandably does not trust having some strange woman insert herself into their lives right now; there’s so little he can control about what’s going on around him that his immediate reaction is keep this person away from them until he can figure out more about who she is what she wants what she’s after etc. But, like she says more than once, “I’m good at plenty of things, but taking no for an answer isn’t one of them.”

Sharon throws a fundraiser at the salon and shows up at Ed’s door with an envelope full of cash. Ed’s mother Barbara (Nancy Travis) invites her to stay for dinner. Ed is still very reluctant. “She’s a mess,” he tells Barbara. “Then she’ll fit right in,” his mother answers. Then there is the roller coaster of challenges and conflicts as Michelle gets sicker and the financial burden becomes more insurmountable.

The screenplay, by “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret’s” Kelly Fremon Craig and actress/writer Meg Tilly gets sugary, especially in the scenes with the adorable young sisters (who are both quite good). Ritchson has the difficult task of playing a stoic character who says very little, there are always words (and emotions) going on inside him that he keeps buried deep down because if he lets go if he admits even to himself how scared devastated angry etc., he really is then he will never regain control over what happens next over his own life/etc., so instead all we see on screen from him most of the time is this tightly wound ball of something but Swank does better with a character who presents another set of challenges. Sharon is impulsive and irresponsible in some ways and very focused and capable in others, also it just zips by so many crises and so many good deeds for this family that it ends up undermining our sense understanding appreciation everything else about what all she actually accomplishes along the way etc.

During the very peak of the film, there is lack of faith in the audience from the screenplay which results into another catastrophic conflict being resolved on top of an already hugely disastrous collision of calamities with a Capra esque finale that brings the whole town together then adds a softening touch of much longed for reconciliation.

Quieter and more dramatically and emotionally true should be the strongest scenes of any movie. One scene that sticks out for me as being emotionally powerful shows both Ed and Sharon admitting to themselves their own devils about what she brings; particularly how her most destructive addictive behaviours are also connected with Michelle’s well being (and by extension all those close). Swank’s straight ahead honesty as an actor fits perfectly with plain speaking determinedness required by role such as this one where it might even make some ordinary people like us want to try harder.

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