Praise be to Swank’s extraordinary talent
Ordinary Angels (PG, 117 mins)
Directed byJon Gunn
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
***½
Ordinary Angels is based on a true story. In 1994, in Louisville, Kentucky, a young girl was facing a life-threatening illness that would necessitate a liver transplant. But, if a suitable liver did turn up, it would become a race against the clock to get young Michelle Schmitt to the hospital that could perform the surgery, before the liver would go to whoever was next on the list to receive it.
The distance involved was 700 miles and the requisite liver arrived on January 17, just as the Midwest fell into a trough of recordbreaking cold weather and snow.
Look, there's a PG rating on Ordinary Angels and the film is being shamelessly marketed at church groups, so I reckon I'm not dropping any spoilers to tell you everything turns out OK in the end.
And, Ordinary Angels actually works as a film, with the “thoughts and prayers’’ part of the storytelling taking a back seat to a fairly down-to-earth paean to the power of community – religious or otherwise.
Alan Ritchson is Ed Schmitt, the widowed dad of Michelle. He’s now confronting the possible death of his daughter while buckling under a mountain of bills that are impossible to pay without medical insurance. But Michelle’s mother’s lengthy stay in hospital only a few years before has drained the family’s insurance policies.
Into the Schmitts’ life comes a wellmeaning stranger by the name of Sharon Stevens, who makes it her business to raise money for Michelle’s treatment, meet the hospital administrators who are sending Ed the insurmountable bills and to even arrange a flight in a snow-storm when the liver becomes available.
Why this human dynamo has latched on to the Schmitts is not a question the writers interrogate too deeply. Sharon is simply taken at face value – as a recovering alcoholic with a heart of gold who finds herself with a surfeit of compassion and nowhere to put it.
Somehow making this all work is Hilary Swank, blasting into the picture at about the 20-minute mark like she’s auditioning for a remake of Erin Brockovich. Swank grasps Ordinary Angels by the scruff and just keeps shaking until it starts to look like a watchable film.
All credit to Ritchson, who never hinted in his deadly-doofus-witha-dark-past performance in TV’s Reacher that he could even spell the word “nuance’’, let alone deliver it, but Ordinary Angels is Swank’s world and everyone else involved is just lucky to be living in it.
I walked out of the cinema happy that Swank – and some nicely inventive and understated work from cinema-tographer Maya Bankovic (Akilla’s Escape) had salvaged what could have been an unwatchably saccharine couple of hours. But I was also left with things to think about. First, Ordinary Angels is being touted as a film about the power of prayer. But God, as usual, had nothing to do with the outcome. It was the Louisville newspapers, TV channels and radio stations that broadcast the call for help that brought the community together and saved Michelle. If you want to thank anyone, it should be your local journalists for the actual miracles they occasionally get to perform.
And, when is the US – the richest nation in history – going to demand universal healthcare, so children aren’t left to die at the whim of insurance firms – and there are no more “true stories’’ like this one?
Ordinary Angels is in select cinemas nationwide.