“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
Based on a true story, “Ordinary Angels” sees Ritchson, still pumped-up from playing former U.S. Army military policeman on Amazon Prime’s “Reacher,” as Ed Schmitt, the recently widowed single father of two preteen girls, Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) and Michelle (Emily Mitchell).
If it wasn’t for bad luck, Ed would have any luck at all.
“Have faith,” his mother (Nancy Travis) tells him.
“A lotta good faith is doing me,” he says.
Already drowning in debt from his late wife’s medical bills, Ed is also struggling with Michelle’s life-threatening liver condition. She will need a transplant, but finding a donor could take years, and until then, the medical bills will continue to pile up.
In another part of town, while Michelle waits for a new liver, Sharon Stevens (Swank), a brassy hairdresser with a drinking problem, is doing everything she can to ruin hers. She is bold, the kind of drunk who dances on (and falls off of) bars, and says “I ain’t great with boundaries.”
The morning after a bender, while buying beer at a local shop, a newspaper headline about Michelle’s dire condition grabs her by the heart. Uninvited, she shows up at Ed’s church as the preacher implores his flock to, “Find a way to help this family.”
Sharon trades her enthusiasm for drinking with fund-raising efforts to help Ed and his family dig themselves out of their financial hole. After she arrives at Ed’s home with an enveloped stuffed with $3000, he reluctantly accepts her assistance. “I’m good at a lot of things,” she says. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer isn’t one of them.”
Co-writers Kelly Fremon Craig (who recently wrote and directed the film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) and Meg Tilly, lean on the details of true story from 1994 in linear fashion. So, there are no big surprises in “Ordinary Angels,” just compelling characters and a three Kleenex story.
Ritchson leaves Jack Reacher’s sarcastic brashness on the shelf to play Ed as a quiet, broken man who puts his family’s needs ahead of his own. Without time to properly grieve his late wife, he has tamped down his heartache as he carries the weight of the world on his very broad shoulders.
Swank gives Sharon a blustery shell that camouflages a troubled past. Her soured relationship with her adult son and alcoholism are confronted, but neither are fully explored. Sharon says she doesn’t like to talk about herself, but a bit more backstory may have fleshed out the psychology behind her extraordinary generosity. Still, Swank makes her forceful in an Erin Brockovich kind of way.
“Ordinary Angels” is formulaic—the highs are really high, the lows are really low—and the climatic race against time goes on too long to be truly exciting, but the film’s themes of the importance of community, of the healing power of kindness and of how one person can make a difference, may tug at the heartstrings.
A weekly feature from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest and most interesting movies! This week Richard looks at the kid’s action movie “My Spy,” the divorce drama “Hope Gap” and the political polarization of “The Hunt.”
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk about the weekend’s biggest releases including “My Spy,” the odd couple flick for kids, the controversial “The Hunt,” the adult drama “Hope Gap” and the wild supernatural comedy “Extra Ordinary.”
Last summer, just before the original release date for “The Hunt,” a political satire starring “GLOW’s” Betty Gilpin, President Trump Tweeted, sight unseen, that it was “made in order … to inflame and cause chaos.” Being labelled “very, very bad for our Country!” by the most powerful man in the world the film got the political satire pulled from distribution. The President and the rest of us will finally get a chance to see what all the fuss was about when the movie hits screens this weekend.
Breathing the same bloody air as dystopian movies like “The Purge,” “The Hunt” is a violent b-movie that examines America’s current political divide in very broad strokes. Gilpin plays Crystal, one of a group of strangers—i.e. “deplorables”—kidnapped by Athena (Hilary Swank), the ringleader of a group of “liberal ‘cucks’ who run the deep state.”
“Every year these liberal elites kidnap a bunch of normal folks like us,” reveals Gary (Ethan Suplee), “and hunt us for sport.” The game becomes less lopsided when Crystal fights back, eliminating the “competition” one by one.
Horror films have long used guts and gore as allegories for modern societal woes. “Frankenstein” is a God complex story. “Night of the Living Dead” is a metaphor for the past coming back to wreak havoc on the future. Those, and others like social-politically themes “The Host” and “Videodrome,” or “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’s” look at conformity, among others, provide important and entertaining ways of looking at ourselves through a different lens. “The Hunt,” while entertaining in a b-movie kind of way, doesn’t really rise to the designation of important. Like so many things these days, the outrage that preceded its release was blown out of proportion.
There’s no allegory here. “The Hunt” is a literal representation of political polarization in a “Hunger Games”-style of haves and have-nots. It’s the 1% vs the 99% until a plot twist suggests that this may be an even emptier exercise in us vs them than originally thought. Most of what passes for social commentary—and it hits most every social situation from racism, class division, crisis acting, immigration, fake news, corruption, gender identification and cultural appropriation—is punctuated with a gun shot or a joke. One “deplorable” calls another a “snowflake” when he refuses to shoot her after she’s been injured. The punchline? A gunshot.
“The Hunt” is a gutsy (sometimes literally) grindhouse movie that only goes as deep as to poke fun at people who use “their” instead of “there.” But while it may not have the power, as the Pres sez, to inflame and cause chaos, it is an effectively gritty little thriller more interested in the fist-in-your-face action (delivered with the subtlety of an Alex Jones monologue) than getting in your face with its message.
Richard joins CP24 anchor Nathan Downer to have a look at the weekend’s new movies including Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the “Hunt for Red October” copy cat “Hunter Killer,” the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto,” the comedic cautionary tale “Room for Rent,” the family drama “What They Had” and the operatic documentary “Maria by Callas.”
Richard has a look at Melissa McCarthy’s dramatic turn in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the family drama “What They Had” and Gerard Butler’s action-adventure “Hunter Killer” with CFRA Morning Rush host Bill Carroll.
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the family drama “What They Had” and the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto.”
Tough and tender, “What They Had” is a story of Alzheimer’s and dysfunction but never dips into the easy sentimentality of many other family dramas.
Writer-director Elizabeth Chomko begins the story with Ruth (Blythe Danner), in a dementia daze, dressed in a nightgown, getting out of bed and walking off into a blizzard. The disappearance is short-lived but serious enough for Ruth’s daughter Bridget (Hilary Swank) and granddaughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga) to fly to Chicago from California to come to her side.
Son Nick (Michael Shannon) thinks it is time to put Ruth in a home where she can be looked after but Burt (Robert Forster), her husband of decades, wants her to stay home where he can look after her. Caught between Nick and Burt, Bridget believes her mother should be put in a memory care facility called Reminisce Neighbourhood but is torn in the best way to make it happen.
The synopsis does “What They Had” no favours. It sounds like a downer, an earnest movie of the week style story of bickering siblings up against a stubborn patriarch. But it is more than that. There is pain, anger and heartbreak but there is also humour. Shannon’s outbursts, born of frustration and a certain amount of realism, are often amusing and always hit exactly the right notes.
There are strong performances across the board—Swank, Forster and Farmiga all feel completely authentic—but the film’s beating heart is Danner, who plays Ruth as though she’s wearing a shroud of sadness at her fleeting memory.
“What They Said” occasionally feels cluttered, as though the focus is spread to widely over all the characters, but its unflinching eye for detail is a strength not a minus.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk about Melissa McCarthy’s literary drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” the “Hunt for Red October” wannabe “Hunter Killer,” the highfalutin hostage story “Bel Canto,” the comedic cautionary tale “Room for Rent” and the Alzheimer’s dramedy “What They Had.”
“Ordinary Angels,” a new faith-based film starring Hillary Swank and Alan Ritchson, and now playing in theatres, is an uplifting film about the virtues of not taking “no” for an answer.
