Ordinary Angels

Wings of Grit and Glitter

Faith-based cinema has long suffered from a reputation for sterility—a tendency to sand down the jagged edges of human experience until only a smooth, inoffensive parable remains. The genre often presents a world where prayer is a vending machine and redemption is a foregone conclusion. Jon Gunn’s *Ordinary Angels*, however, arrives with a surprising amount of dirt under its fingernails. While it eventually steers into the skid of miraculous melodrama, it is anchored by a grittiness and emotional texture that transcends its sermonizing roots. This is not a film about saints; it is a film about the desperate, loud, and messy collision of two people drowning in different oceans.



The film’s aesthetic is decidedly unglamorous, capturing a specific shade of working-class Kentucky in the mid-1990s that feels lived-in rather than set-dressed. Gunn utilizes a visual language that contrasts the suffocating grayness of grief with the garish, neon-lit chaos of addiction. The camera often lingers on the mundane—a pile of unpaid medical bills, an empty bottle, a snow-choked driveway. These aren't just props; they are the antagonists. When the film transitions into its climatic sequence—a reenactment of the 1994 North American cold wave—the blizzard is framed not as a winter wonderland, but as a suffocating white void, a physical manifestation of the impossible odds facing the protagonist, Ed Schmitt.



At the narrative’s center is a friction that sparks real heat. Hilary Swank plays Sharon Stevens, a hairdresser whose altruism is inextricably linked to her alcoholism. Swank eschews the vanity often associated with "movie star" turns; her Sharon is a whirlwind of fringed jackets, hairspray, and boundary-crossing persistence. She treats the film’s central conflict—a race to save a young girl needing a liver transplant—not merely as a good deed, but as a frantic bid for her own survival. Opposite her, Alan Ritchson (shedding the invincible armor of his *Reacher* persona) delivers a performance of crushing restraint. As Ed, the widowed father, he is a man calcified by loss. His refusal to accept help isn’t portrayed as noble stoicism, but as a trauma response, a fear that letting anyone in will cause his precarious world to shatter.



The film’s emotional intelligence lies in its understanding of "intrusion." In most dramas, the savior is welcomed; here, she is tolerated. The script allows Sharon to be annoying, overbearing, and frequently wrong, which makes her eventual integration into the Schmitt family feel earned rather than inevitable. The narrative suggests that community isn't built on polite gestures, but on the aggressive, sometimes uncomfortable refusal to let a neighbor fall.

While *Ordinary Angels* inevitably succumbs to the structural demands of the inspirational biopic—swelling strings and all—it earns its tears. It posits that miracles are rarely divine lightning bolts; more often, they are the result of logistics, snow shovels, and broken people deciding to show up for one another. It is a testament to the idea that you don't have to be whole to heal someone else.