Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ordinary Angels’ on Starz, an Almost Faith-Based True Story in Which Hilary Swank is One Family’s Earthly Savior

Faith-based movies are a dime a dozen, but WATCHABLE faith-based movies? They’re rare, and that’s where the conversation about Ordinary Angels ( now streaming on Starz ) begins. This BOATS ( Based On A True Story ) movie – about a dying girl who needs a liver transplant, her beleaguered father, and the stranger who helps them – differentiates itself from other Christian-message films by not being so obvious about its Christian message. Anyone who’s gutted out God’s Not Dead or a recent Kirk Cameron feature knows that far too often, screenplays feel like sermons padded out with a little drama and dialogue. Ordinary Angels focuses on characters played by two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank and Jack Reacher TV series star Alan Ritchson, and their spirituality is embedded in their actions – until someone brings up prayer lists or holding true to one’s faith despite hardship. So the film avoids opening a bible and slamming our noses in it, for the most part, anyway.

I Will Be Your Father Figure: 7 Father’s Day Movies For Dads To Devour on Amazon Prime Video

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Big Sky River: The Bridal Path’ on the Hallmark Channel, A Scenic Sequel To 2022’s ‘Big Sky River’

The Gist: Beep… beep… beep … we know that sound. It’s an EKG. It’s good news though – Ed Schmitt (Ritchson) and his wife Theresa (Amy Acker) have a new baby girl. They settle on a name: Michelle. FIVE YEARS LATER. Ed weeps. Theresa is in the hospital bed again. She’s close. Very close – to the other side. “You rest now baby,” he says. “I’ll take care of the girls.” It won’t be easy – Michelle (Emily Mitchell) has a rare disease, one that requires a liver transplant within the next year or so. She’s on the list, but not close enough to the top. One night Ed and Michelle and his other daughter Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and his mother Barbara (Nancy Travis) huddle in the basement of their Louisville home, waiting out a storm, when he notices Michelle’s eyes are yellowing. He drops everything and takes her through the tornado warning to the hospital for another transfusion. It costs six grand and all his credit cards get declined, and that’s barely the tip of the ol’ iceberg. Ed has more bills than sanity these days, and no health insurance. America!

Meanwhile. Sharon Stevens (Swank) is hammered . How hammered? Dancing on the bar and falling off the bar and getting back up on the bar to keep dancing hammered, that’s how. She wakes up face down in bed, makeup smeared, and you can just imagine she really needs some Listerine. She moseys to the kitchen and pours a vodka with OJ before realizing her bestie Rose (Tamala Jones) – they co-own a hair salon – is in the living room. Rose made sure Sharon got home in one piece, and it sure doesn’t seem like the first time. And now, Rose is going to make sure Sharon boot-scootin’-boogies to an AA meeting, where she declares that no, she is NOT an alcoholic, she’s just an angry woman with a headache. But she hears it when others at the meeting talk about needing to believe in something bigger than themselves. Jesus, maybe? Sobriety? Both, probably.

CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER

On the way home, still wearing the same fall-off-the-bar clothes from the night before, Sharon picks up a six pack of brewskis and a newspaper boasting a front-page article about poor little Michelle and her late mother. Moved by the story, she stops at Ashley’s memorial service. She doesn’t know Ed or his family, but she meets them, awkwardly. She’ll meet them again a bit later, after she papers the town with flyers for a benefit “hair-a-thon” at the salon. She raises a few grand and knocks on Ed’s door to hand him an envelope full of cash. He’s understandably suspicious of this gregarious buttinsky of a woman who admits she has an issue with violating personal boundaries – she all but bum-rushes her way into his house – but is absolutely pure of heart in her desire to help. She’s brassy and gregarious and charismatic and doesn’t take no for an answer, so Ed has no choice but to let her. And Barbara and the girls like her, which counts for something.

And so we get the scene in which Sharon dumps her booze down the sink, and a montage in which she dons her nicest acid-washed-denim dress – it’s 1993, by the way – to clok-clok-clok her high heels all over town, shaking people down for donations. She has some of her own loose threads, like her estranged adult son (Dempsey Bryk), but the Ed And Michelle Endeavor is giving her real purpose. She’s exactly the tough cookie the Schmitt family needs on their side, especially since Ed’s in such a terrible place he’s been – gasp – skipping church and questioning the value of prayer. “Don’t lose your faith over this,” his mother says, before invoking the title of the movie in reference to Sharon. We also get a scene where Sharon bares her claws across from hospital management types because they’re holding more than $400,000 in debt over poor Ed’s head. Get ’em, Sharon. GET ’EM.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sharon’s emitting some serious Erin Brockovich vibes here, albeit on a smaller scale.

Performance Worth Watching: Swank has a way of persuading us to accept and embrace the sincere overtures and larger-than-life qualities of a character like Sharon. Not every movie she’s been in is a winner, but it’s not a reach to say she’s never let us down with her commitment to her characters.

Memorable Dialogue: Ed pulls his mother aside during Sharon’s first visit to the house:

Ed: I’ve met this woman. She’s a mess.

Barbara: Perfect. She’ll fit right in!

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Ordinary Angels is a nice, tearjerky cornball drama that mostly feels like a reasonable, if slightly heightened, depiction of real life. A lot of it actually happened, too, down to the historic snowstorm that battered Kentucky in Jan., 1994, which functions as a major hurdle for little Michelle’s well-being deep in the third act. Some of the details are fudged, and Sharon’s alcoholism is a for-drama’s-sake fabrication, but the film generally sticks to the truth – and therefore makes sure that the deus ex machina involves far less naked deus than the far more realistic machinations of the-Lord-works-through-his-people community togetherness.

So the film depicts its “miracle” via the noble and selfless work of good, well-intentioned people. And for that reason, audiences who aren’t inclined to leap the fences of heavy-handed Christian messages in order to appreciate the heart of a sincere feelgood story like this – well, director Jon Gunn and screenwriters Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig (director of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret ) make sure there’s a more direct route for those audiences to feel that goodness.

Which is to say, if you’re not moved at least a little bit by this story, check your pulse. Swank and Ritchson’s strong, authentic performances elevate a screenplay that’s less cinematic, more old-school made-for-TV in tone and style; it’s chock-full of cliches and on-the-nose dialogue. The film doesn’t seem interested in being a polemic for anything, which robs the story of some of its agency – if anything, religion takes a subtextual backseat to the evils of a health care system that piles stress and anxiety upon people who are already suffering mightily. That would be a message that American people of all creeds and backgrounds could unite behind.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Ordinary Angels is a slickly made, well-acted, predictably soppy BOATS movie. It knows what it is and fulfills its mission ably. As heartwarming comfort-food movies go, it’s pretty good.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com