Ángeles Inesperados

Ordinary Angels is a compelling film that weaves together the threads of faith, family, and the unexpected miracles that shape our lives.

Similar to other films, Ordinary Angels is presented in such a way as to tug on your heartstrings.

Knowing the fragility of the young daughter who recently lost her mother, how could you not feel at least some empathy for the family?

You may even feel empathy for Sharon, the hairdresser who is seeking her own transformation and chance for redemption.

Sharon approaches her journey alongside Ed's family as one of altruism. Yet, she is battling her demons of alcoholism and an estranged relationship with her son.

Helping Michelle helps Sharon and even Ed in ways they might not have recognized.

Sharon brings her tough cookie, 'never stop at the first no' approach to fundraising for the family. Not only is Ed drowning in bills for Michelle, but he also has tens of thousands owed for the care his wife received before dying.

Through Sharon's tenacity, she helps the family cover part of the bill while having the hospital 'erase' a huge swath as well.

I couldn't help but think about all the families out there who are drowning in healthcare bills; unable to stay afloat.

I've heard about how anyone could be one medical emergency away from losing everything. Ed's family was on the verge of losing their home and even his daughter's life with no ability to afford the treatments she needed.

After helping them arrive at a 'clean slate' financially, Sharon doesn't stop as she recognizes there is more to be done.

Michelle will need a transplant (that costs a fair bit of cash) and to have the transplant she has a short window for getting to the hospital doing the operation.

After learning which types of people and companies would have a private jet, Sharon knocks on several doors to get people lined up.

She also leverages the local media to help tell Michelle's story.

Sharon's actions led to an extraordinary, miraculous outcome. Michelle survived and has been able to lead a life that touches many others.

The inspiration we can glean from Ordinary Angels is that each of us can contribute to the benefit of others. That you may need to ask a lot of people before you find someone who can and will help.

This is a very touching film with very few surprises (there's little doubt how it will all work out). I don't think anyone with a pulse will be able to distance themselves completely from its powerful emotional impact, which is made possible by excellent performances by Hilary Swank and. Alan Ritchson. They are really wonderful in their roles. Ritchson manages to convey all the enormous pain he feels while maintaining a tough, stolid demeanor. His love for his daughters feels completely genuine. Swank gives yet another terrific performance as a woman with many serious problems of her own trying to help this struggling family. It is the Capra-kind of movie designed to make you feel better about humanity and, thanks to truly fine work by the leads, it succeeds.

A heart-warming family entertainment starring Hilary Swank, "Ordinary Angels", based on a true story, is set in rural Louisville, Kentucky in the early 90's and centres around the family of Alan Ritchson's Ed character. Sadly, this is a family struck by tragedy as we quickly learn that after giving birth to two daughters, his wife dies only five years later. Even worse, their youngest daughter, has a life-threatening kidney disorder and because hard-working but hard-up family man Ed can't afford medical insurance, the bills for little Michelle's specialist treatment just keep piling up. His devoted mother pitches in to help but clearly the family is about to go under...

Which is where the town hairdresser, Hilary Swank's Sharon Stevens comes in. She too is a struggling single parent, although her apparent predilection for drink has estranged her from her teenage-musician son. It seems as if her life too is on a downward spiral until she crashes the family funeral and hooks up with Ed and his adorable daughters as a result of which she decides to help them out. This she promptly proceeds to do, beginning with a fund-raising haircut-drive in her shop. But she doesn't stop there and soon afterwards drops full-square into the family's lives and despite his initial resistance, uses her business head and sheer cussedness when it comes to negotiating deals to take charge of Ed and his finances to help them stay afloat.

But little Michelle's condition takes a turn for the worse to the extent that only a kidney transplant can save her life. It all ends up in a madcap race in terrible winter conditions to get the little girl to a hospital six hours away and will require the willing cooperation of a number of "ordinary angels", coralled together by Sharon, to hopefully save the day.

Even if one suspects that some of the action is ramped up to varying degrees for dramatic effect and I'll include in that the suspiciously contrived-looking sub-plot of Sharon's broken relationship with her own boy, you'd have to have a heart as cold as Kentucky snow not to be warmed by this tear-jerker as it reaches its nail-biting climax.

Swank is very good as the boozy Stevens who finds her own self through helping others and Ritchson too shines as the big man pushed to his limits but whose obvious love for his kids pulls him through.

All in all, despite perhaps over-stoking the fire at times, this feel-good movie will put a smile on your face even as you at times will doubtless dab a tear or two away from your eyes.

Ordinary Angels is a pretty safe bet of a film. There's a dying girl. A stubborn and loving father doing his best in the face of adversity. An everyday hero who swoops in Erin Brockovich style and impacts their lives in unimaginable ways.

It makes for very inspiring, heart warming stuff that will be sure to have you reaching for the tissues at some point. It is very much marketed as a tearjerker film and it absolutely delivers on this front.

The filmmaking is probably overly cliche and doesn't really push the boat out too much. It also maybe overstays its welcome slightly with the runtime. These aren't huge issues as the narrative is really the driving force of the film, but these areas could have been tightened up.

The performance from Alan Ritchson is maybe one of the best elements of the film. He really sells it as the hard working father swimming against the tide to keep his family together. Hilary Swank is of course brilliant with a brilliantly written character. Any film with a dying child has the potential to be far too bleak, but her performance and character ensure this is never the case.

So although Ordinary Angels doesn't do anything particularly flash, it tells its story well with a couple of great performances to boot. The emotional core of the story is the real selling point, and this is executed very well making a watch well worth while.

As someone who is not religious at all, I have been pleasantly surprised by the caliber of films formally billed as faith-based in 2024. This is a well-crafted, largely accurate retelling of a real story which is human-centered first, systemic second and keeps prayer, God's will, etc. At the margins, and it is all the stronger for it.

In fact, while religion often presents larger-than-life figures, it appears that the largest deviation from reality was in giving Sharon (the friendly not-quite-neighbour driving the plot with her laser-focused commitment on keeping the deathly ill Michelle alive until her transplant) a struggle with alcoholism she appears not to have had in real life - perhaps deciding she would come across as too much of an angel otherwise. The other possibility is that making her more flawed than she was made Michelle's father stubborn reluctance about accepting aid seem a bit less ungrateful - a dynamic also seen in the broadly comparable Unsung Hero that year.

In all, it's hard not to stunned by the sheer range of obstacles standing in the way of Michelle's survival - both systemic and natural. After the family and their helper angels in town push through the creeping bills in one way or another again, again and AGAIN, the blizzard at the end is the kind of complication you would dismiss in a fictional script as too convenient, yet it absolutely happened, and the scenes caused by it are not just alternately tense and inspiring, but also remarkably well-directed for a "true story" film.

Admittedly, the other way in which the blizzard is convenient is that it allows for a great conclusion without grappling with the elephant in the room of the U. S. healthcare system. In the richest country in the world, a family maybe shouldn't need to rely on a chance encounter with "angel" who had nothing else to devote her life to avoid literal destitution while waiting for their daughter's transplant. In the film, that thought hangs in the air throughout - too fragile for the filmmakers to touch, since they would rather have us see it as divine providence.

As it is, this is a story of a town which came together and made a real effort to save one of their own - and then apparently took a step back and allowed the same thing to keep happening to other people in their country in the 30 years since. Out of sight, out of mind. It would have been more courageous to make that subtext into text - but even now, this point is hard to miss, so I still feel comfortable recommending this film with minimal reservations.

P. S. When it comes to the topic of organ donation, one could pose even more uncomfortable questions about for-profit transplants - a practice considered so ethically fraught it is apparently only legal in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where it by turns encourages exploitation yet also largely eliminates the grief of losing a family member to an organ donation waiting list. Since Michelle was a young child at the time, such an option would not have been available even under the Iranian system, so I don't fault the film for not mentioning it.