Ordinary Angels review — Hilary Swank impresses, the politics do not

Hats off to Hilary Swank, who wades into the “faith-based” movie genre and finds something authentic and painful among the sermonising and the syrup. The two-time Oscar-winner plays Sharon Stevens, a Kentucky hairdresser who in 1993 became a fundraising champion for Michelle Schmitt (Emily Mitchell), a local five-year-old child in desperate need of a liver transplant.

The film is directed by Jon Gunn, whose previous work includes the depressingly didactic Do You Believe? and The Case for Christ. There is a familiar faith-based overlay to the narrative here, one that sees Sharon’s struggles with alcoholism and the financial woes of the Schmitt family as purely Abrahamic tests, sent from above.

There is also, however, a great tension, with Swank in fully powered Erin Brockovich mode, delivering an earthy and secular character piece about a woman’s need to define her own destiny. Her Sharon is introduced as a riotous, vodka-swilling “southern firecracker” who dances on bar tops, wears glittery miniskirts to funerals and announces to the Schmitt patriarch, Ed (an effective Alan Ritchson): “There are some things you should know about me, but taking no for an answer ain’t one of them!”

As the drama deepens, the nuanced script by Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig reveals Sharon’s flaw, her chequered past and pernicious self-hatred. The film’s more overtly Christian elements, including calls for divine intervention, dovetail neatly with Sharon’s yearning to be held, supported and, ultimately, forgiven.

Unforgivable, nonetheless, is the film’s persistent refusal to castigate the US healthcare system, one that piles more than $400,000 worth of debt onto Ed, a cash-strapped roofer, and then threatens his daughter with almost certain death unless he can hire a private plane to fly her to Nebraska for surgery. No, says the film, don’t worry about the money. The system is perfect. God will look after you. And if not there’s always Hilary Swank.
★★★☆☆
12A, 118min
In cinemas

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