The trend of quality Christian films from Hollywood continues

There’s a Christian-themed movement in Hollywood that could be branded by the title of one of its biggest hits: last year’s $50 million-plus grossing Jesus Revolution.

Its leaders are two pairs of brothers, the first being Alex and Stephen Kendrick, two Georgia-based Baptist pastors with a string of cinematic successes including Fireproof, Courageous, the $70 million-grossing War Room, and the upcoming August release The Forge.

The other duo is Jon and Andrew Erwin, who had a major hit with their $83 million music biopic I Can Only Imagine, followed by the excellent true-life faith-based sports drama American Underdog. They served as producers on Jesus Revolution, teaming with fellow Christian director Jon Gunn to make a film about the wave of “hippies” in the 1960s and ‘70s who converted to Christianity.

One notable factor draws both teams together: they’ve honed their craft to make movies that can stand up against other dramas put out by the movie industry today. That is demonstrated by the fact that major studio Sony backs the Kendricks with its successful Affirm Films branch, and Gunn and the Erwins created their own production company, Kingdom Story Company, in a multimillion-dollar deal with Lionsgate.

These movies have been of such high quality that they’ve drawn audiences well beyond the Christian demographic. They don’t hammer viewers over the head with heavy-handed preaching and histrionic acting by unknowns, problems that have plagued many previous faith-based films.

Rather, they create true-life tales starring acclaimed mainstream actors such as four-time Emmy-winner Kelsey Grammer of “Frasier” fame (Jesus Revolution) and the much beloved star Dennis Quaid (I Can Only Imagine).

But now they’ve drawn their most prominent actor yet, with two-time Best Actress winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, Million Dollar Baby) as the lead in the new movie Ordinary Angels. Swank plays an alcoholic hairdresser named Sharon Stevens, who touched the hearts of millions nationwide in 1994 with her quest to save a 5-year-old girl named Michelle Schmitt (Emily Mitchell) in need of a kidney transplant.

Stevens also rescued Michelle’s father Ed (Alan Ritchson) from financial ruin by battling to get Michelle’s $500,000 in medical debts forgiven against all odds. Ritchson is another impressive casting coup in the movie, as he’s the popular star of the smash-hit Amazon Prime action series “Reacher”.

Ordinary Angels has an excellent sense of grit and hard-scrabble realities, displaying Sharon’s wild alcohol-fueled behavior (while still being true to its PG rating) in the opening scene where she swigs liquor and dances atop a bar before waking up with a raging hangover. Her life as a working-class woman in Louisville is also saddened by her long-estranged relationship with her twenty-something son, who can’t forget all the damage that her addled mind and behavior caused him while growing up.

Ed is a struggling roofer who just lost his wife to a deadly disease, leaving him a widowed, single father to two young girls and drowning in debt. Sharon stumbles across his tragic tale on the front page of the newspaper on one of her early-morning alcohol runs, and soon finds herself attending the funeral of Ed’s wife, where she introduces herself while barely disguising her drinking problem.

The intrusion makes Ed wary of her, but Sharon quickly stages a 24-hour “Hair-a-thon” where all money paid for hundreds of haircuts totals out to nearly $4,000 that she brings over to his house. She insists on helping him in any way possible, and soon selflessly becomes an “aunt” to the girls, giving them a loving female presence aside from their live-in grandmother (Nancy Travis).

She also teaches Ed how to organize his disastrous finances and prepare to fight back against the hospitals and insurance companies that have put him on the edge of ruin. But her best friend notes that her endless devotion to the family is “addict behavior” and she could fall back on the bottle.

Can Sharon truly manage to change her life? How does she go about saving the day? And in the film’s strong final third, how will the city of Louisville team up in an incredible variety of ways to save Michelle’s life?

Ordinary Angels tells an extraordinary story with strong craft and deep relatability. The fact that these are “ordinary” folks who rise to the challenge makes this a story that can inspire viewers, Christian or otherwise, to think of the ways that they can help serve others in their own communities in a deep and meaningful way.

Swank won her Oscars for playing characters filled with a fiery spirit, particularly in her turn as a female boxer in Million Dollar Baby, and she takes a fresh angle to that approach here.  Her Sharon cannot and will not be stopped in her quest, but that steely determination isn’t driven by anger and physical force, but by using her emotions and charm to win over others.

Ritchson does a 180-degree turn from his hyper-tough guy performance on “Reacher” to show a guy who has too much of a “manly” attitude for his own good. He disdains Sharon’s help for a good portion of the movie, but when he finally breaks emotionally and welcomes her assistance, it’s a truly beautiful performance that is emotional without being cloying.

The movie shows Ed and his kids to be church-going people despite the fact he had given up on worshiping God for a time after the loss of his wife, while Sharon enters warily at the funeral after a long time away. She subtly blends in with the community and eventually draws their dramatic and unique support at the climax (even though you know Michelle has to survive to merit a movie, the final third has several unpredictable plot twists).

No one breaks down and falls on a church floor in agonized surrender, but the fact that the spiritual uplift in these lives is ordinary indeed makes Ordinary Angels valuable at reaching secular audiences as well and avoid just preaching to the choir. I recommend watching this movie in theaters; it has a rare 99 percent positive rating from audiences and a remarkable 81 percent from secular critics, who normally scoff at these kinds of films.