Ordinary Angels 2024 Movie Review Trailer

With a true story centered on ordinary people achieving extraordinary feats, “Ordinary Angels” can't help but embrace sentimentality at its core. It's built into their DNA and it's the reason this compelling and moving drama came to the big screen 30 years after it was made, at a time when we too are searching for light in a dark world.

What elevates the film beyond your average inspirational nonsense, however, is the way director Jon Gunn and company control the slow release of its sweetness so as not to overwhelm. This technique, while forgivably manipulative, works to great effect and in the end even the cynics will be won over by the human kindness on display.

Director: Jon Gunn

Writers: Kelly Fremon Craig, Meg Tilly

Stars: Alan Ritchson, Hilary Swank, Amy Acker

Sharon (Hilary Swank) is a disaster. She lives alone in a dreary apartment and there's barely anything in her refrigerator but stale leftovers and freezer-burned dreams of a better life. She also leaves sloppy voicemails for her estranged son Derek (Dempsey Bryk) night after night. With her southern accent thick and her locks even thicker, this hairdresser covers her sorrows with alcohol, pranks, and a tough exterior. However, her colleague and best friend Rose (Tamala Jones) is fed up with her and, in an act of desperation after Sharon's most recent bender, she leaves her in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's where things start to fall into place.

Eventually Sharon realizes that she needs to find a greater purpose for her life. That message crystallizes when, at the beer checkout, he sees a newspaper headline about five-year-old Michelle Schmitt (Emily Mitchell), who has been struck by terrible circumstances twice: the death of her saintly mother, Theresa (Amy Acker). ), and a desperate need for a liver transplant. Sharon begins with small selfless acts, much to the chagrin of Michelle's grieving widowed father Ed (Alan Ritchson), cutting her hair for a charity fundraiser, organizing the family's mounting bills, and caring for Michelle and her slightly older sister. , Ashley (Skywalker Hughes). . But as Sharon steadfastly endures Schmitt's tensions, her own demons emerge from the shadows once again.

Swank typically does solid work when she is given a role with dimension and complexity, which is again true in this case. The two-time Oscar winner gauges Sharon's energetic perseverance as well as her susceptibility to her anguish and sadness. In Swank's capable hands, the character's predictable arc becomes formidable, evoking sympathy and strength in spades. Additionally, he brings naturalism to the scenes shared with Mitchell and Hughes, rising stars in their own right, efficiently delivering precociousness with the right amount of power.

Ritchson is perfectly cast as a laconic, tired father. As an actor who delivers a stronger performance in the absence of dialogue, he connotes fine resolve and open honesty in quieter moments. His hulking, brooding stature also plays brilliantly in his favor, as it illuminates the underlying intensity of this strong man's primary weakness: his inability to protect his wife and young daughter from the insidious ravages of an incurable disease. There is an innate emotional power in this dichotomy.

Gunn skillfully exercises a necessary minimum of visual prowess to emphasize the character's drive. At the end of the second act, Sharon's image is erased through a bottle of alcohol as she hits rock bottom, feeling the inadequacy of her identity as a mother and miracle worker. 

From editor Parker Adams' lively, propulsive montages to cinematographer Maya Bankovic's diffuse lighting inside the Schmitts' cozy home, the grounded aesthetic is absorbing and, at times, sobering. The absence of the deceased mother is felt throughout the family home, both in the empty, lifeless corners that imprison Ed in grief and debt, and in the handprint mailbox that needs repair.

Despite these strengths, the film also has notable weaknesses. It's a blessing that Gunn and screenwriters Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig find room for subtlety and nuance, but they lack confidence in their audience remembering what's at stake, explaining it at times. Ed's crisis of faith is neither innovative nor sufficiently integrated, and is reduced to tropes and simplistic scenarios. Composer Pancho Burgos-Goizueta's cheesy strings are all too omnipresent, doing much of the heavy lifting in the third act from obstacle to obstacle, racing to the hospital's makeshift transport site during an already harrowing and real 1994 blizzard.

Watch Ordinary Angels 2024 Movie Trailer