Hilary Swank in Inspirational Drama – The Hollywood Reporter

‘Bizarre Angels’

Allen Fraser/Lionsgate

We’re knowledgeable within the opening seconds of Bizarre Angels that “It is a true story,” and it’s factor. In any other case, it could be all too simple to scoff at this inspirational drama, which pulls your heartstrings with the experience of Jascha Heifetz. Cynics will most likely achieve this anyway, and there’s little doubt artistic liberties have been utilized. Nonetheless, this movie starring Hilary Swank as a Kentucky hairdresser who rallies her group on behalf of a widower and his critically in poor health three-year-old daughter proves irresistible with its highly effective feel-good story.  

Set in Louisville within the early ‘90s, the movie begins by introducing us to its troubled heroine, Sharon (Swank, sporting huge hair and a Julia-Roberts-as-Erin-Brockovich accent), who wears quick skirts and loudly buys everybody at her native tavern a beer earlier than leaping on the bar and dancing raucously to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” Sure, it’s clear that Sharon has a ingesting drawback, and that her drunken ebullience covers up appreciable inside turmoil. Her good buddy and co-hairstylist Rose (Tamala Jones) turns into so alarmed by Sharon’s habits that she drops her off at an AA assembly, the place Sharon refuses to confess she’s an alcoholic.

However her troubles don’t evaluate to these of Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson, Reacher), a blue-collar roofer who has simply misplaced his spouse to a uncommon illness that additionally threatens to kill his youngest daughter Michelle (Emily Mitchell) until she receives a liver transplant for which she’s far down on the checklist. Now elevating her and her older sister Ashley (Skywalker Hughes) with solely the assistance of his mom Barbara (Nancy Travis, as interesting as ever), Ed, who doesn’t have medical health insurance, struggles to pay medical payments that embody $6,000 for Michelle’s latest emergency room go to.

Studying concerning the household story, Sharon impulsively exhibits up on the funeral, nonetheless hung over, awkwardly introduces herself to Ed and the youngsters and presents to assist. He responds with a stiff, “Thanks, ma’am,” and assumes that’s the tip of it. However Sharon quickly organizes a “Hair-O-Thon” fundraiser and exhibits up at Ed’s door to offer him the $3,200 she’s raised. A lot to Ed’s discomfort, Barbara invitations the brash Sharon to return in and be a part of them, privately telling her son, “When the lord sends a girl to your door with an envelope full of money, you invite her for dinner.”

That’s solely the start of Sharon’s efforts, as she quickly turns into utterly intertwined with Ed and the youngsters and makes it her private mission to unravel his many monetary issues. Alongside the best way, she delivers the form of traces that actresses love saying, and Swank tears into them with gusto. “I’m good at loads of issues,” she tells Ed. “Taking no for a solution isn’t one among them.” At one other level, after she joins him at a enterprise assembly and recklessly guarantees a possible shopper that he can tackle extra work than Ed feels he can deal with, she advises him, “Life’s about saying sure, after which figuring it out.”

Whereas slightly of this form of factor can go a great distance, Swank makes it work with a canny efficiency that conveys her character’s inside turbulence, a lot of it derived from her troubled relationship together with her estranged grown son. Ritchson’s flip enhances hers properly, the actor letting his huge body do the work for him because the taciturn, emotionally undemonstrative Ed who loves his youngsters dearly and can do something for them. Because the story develops, the screenplay by Kelly Fremon Craig (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret?) and actress Meg Tilly rushes via such epochal developments as Sharon managing to get a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} in medical payments erased throughout a single dialog. However by then her forcefulness has been so nicely established that we simply go along with it.

Nevertheless it’s the rousing finale, involving a determined try and get Michelle to a hospital a whole bunch of miles away for a liver transplant throughout a horrendous blizzard, that can have audiences cheering. A sequence involving the whole group banding collectively to clear a makeshift helicopter touchdown spot on the snow-covered parking area of (the place else?) a neighborhood church can be unimaginable to consider, save for the real-life information footage chronicling the occasion through the finish credit.

Bizarre Angels, skillfully directed by Jon Gunn, arrives courtesy of Kingdom Story Firm, additionally accountable for such faith-based hits as I Can Solely Think about and Jesus Revolution. Its religiosity is instantly obvious (“Son, don’t lose your religion over this,” Barbara advises her son throughout a troublesome second) however dealt with with relative subtlety. The movie, for all its predictable parts, proves inspirational in the perfect sense of the phrase.