Hitting US cinemas on February 23 is a film that can’t fail to make a splash. Not only does Ordinary Angels boast an Oscar-winner as its lead, but it has an eager in-built audience ready to head to the cinema. It’s the latest release to emerge from a partnership between mainstream film studio Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company, a US production house making Christian movies.
Last year’s Jesus Revolution told the true-life story of an evangelical pastor from California (The Kissing Booth’s Joel Courtney); this time it’s a race-against-time story, with Hilary Swank playing a woman battling to save a young girl from critical illness – and taking on the elements in the process.
Is Ordinary Angels based on a true story?
Yes, the film is inspired by real events that took place in Louisville, Kentucky during the depths of the biting winter of 1994. A hairdresser called Sharon Stevens (Swank) met a roofer called Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson, Reacher), a widower whose five-year-old daughter, Michelle, is in urgent need of a liver transplant.
The call finally came through that a new liver was ready. The wrinkle? It was in Omaha and the whole state was in the grip of the so-called ‘Kentucky Blizzard’, with temperatures as low as 22 below and 16 inches of snow on the ground. With highways closed and the clock ticking on the organ’s viability, Sharon sprang into action, galvanising the local community to carve out a helicopter pad on the town’s snowbound car park and get Michelle to hospital.
‘The life of this tiny little child was saved through the most extraordinary, impossible circumstances,’ explains director Jon Gunn, ‘And to me, it's about a rush of hope. It's about lifting people up, lifting up the human spirit and the human condition.’
How accurate is the movie?
Co-screenwriters Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret) and director Jon Gunn strove to keep the story on-screen as close to real-life events as possible. Their main source was Sharon Stevens Evans’s own memoir, ‘Ordinary Angels’.
‘As I was looking at the true story and looking at the real people, I felt like there was a responsibility and an obligation to tell their story in a way that honoured their life,’ says director Gunn. ‘So my vision was to share – with honesty and integrity – the truth and the challenges and the pain of that true story in a way that was optimistic and uplifting.’
The movie recreates some of the story’s smaller details, too. It was originally titled ‘Angels’, a reference to the snow angels made by two girls in the car park when the Michelle’s chopper finally took off.
In one change from the real story, Winnipeg stood in for Kentucky for filming.
Is Ordinary Angels a Christian film?
Yes and no. The movie’s tagline, ‘Find your purpose. Make a Difference’, is woolly enough to sound like the standard inspirational Hollywood fare. But Ordinary Angels is a firmly prayer-powered enterprise – literally, in fact: the film has been subject of weekly prayer calls online – hosted by the pastor of the church at the centre of the story, Louisville’s Southeast Christian Church. (Maybe this is where Madame Web went wrong.)
But according to producer Jon Berg, the film’s message is universal enough to appeal to secular as well as Christian audiences. ‘It's a true story about cooperation, perseverance and community,’ he says. ‘Helping one’s neighbour and also moving mountains no matter who you are.’
Who stars in Ordinary Angels?
Alongside Hilary Swank, a Best Actress winner for Boy’s Don’t Cry (1999), and Alan Ritchson – aka Aquaman in Smallville – are Nancy Travis (ABC’s Last Man Standing), who plays Ed Schmitt’s mum, and Tamala Jones as her straight-talking BFF Rose. Pastor Stone is played by Drew Powell.
Where can you watch it?
Ordinary Angels hits US cinemas on Friday, February 23. The film’s official website is offering group tickets, presumably aimed at entire church congregations. It should be available to stream later in 2024.