Redeeming Love

Redeeming Love is a sappy romantic melodrama set in the Old West that would be corny, if it wasn't so desperate and dull.  The story seems to be told in slow motion, and the passion that's supposed to be there between the lovers simply is not.  Of the central couple, the only thing that can be said is that the guy is nice and compassionate to a fault, while the girl runs away so much every time he tries to get close to her, it kind of becomes a twisted running gag.

The movie is based on a popular novel by Francine Rivers, who co-wrote the screenplay with the film's director, D.J. Caruso, and tells the story of Angel (Abigail Cowen), a prostitute who lives in an Old West town that is so sinful, it's actually named "Pair-a-Dice". (Subtlety is not this movie's strong suit.) Angel is the most popular woman at the brothel, to the point that the owner (Famke Janssen) holds a lottery every day with the local men to see who gets to spend time with her.  Into town rides the God-fearing farmer, Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis), who is so lonely, he prays to God that he can find a wife.  As soon as he lays eyes on Angel while she's out for a walk, he is smitten, and knows that she is the woman that God wants him to be with.  Maybe I would believe him if the script ever bothered to develop Michael into a real character, instead of simply a decent Christian man who is as bland as dish soap.  We learn little about him, and exactly why he feels this deep connection with her to the point that he pays double her asking price so that he can visit her in her room every night.

He never asks for sex, as he says he just wants to talk.  He then says he wants to marry her, and take her away from her current life.  We can tell that Michael is a compassionate man, but there's simply nothing to him.  As for Angel, she says early in the film that she does not reflect on her own past.  As soon as she says this, we are brought into a series of extended flashbacks that tell of her tragic childhood and the events that led her to where she is.  It's a story that piles on the sadness and misery, including a loss of her faith, the loss of her mother, being routinely abused and manipulated by powerful and evil men, insulted, and genuinely dragged through the mud.  Michael is supposed to offer her love and escape, but both characters are such bland non-entities, it's impossible to be engaged in either of their stories, or to develop a desire to see them join together.

Redeeming Love slogs its way through its story, constantly coming up with various excuses for Angel to run away from Michael, because she feels he deserves better than her.  He comes to find her the first couple times she does so, but by the third time she runs away from him, he leaves it up to the Man Upstairs to decide if she will come back to him.  All of this happens at such a dragged out pace, the movie starts to resemble an experiment to find out just how much a movie can be slowed down.  It attempts to add some drama by adding in Michael's jealous brother-in-law (Logan Marshall-Green) and Angel being constantly haunted and hunted down by her past, but it's all for naught, because the movie never engages on any level, aside from some well shot scenery.  

The big problem here is that neither the screenplay or the performances by the two lead actors manage to sell this relationship as anything worth giving a damn about.  They're obviously doing the best with the material they have (which provides them no favors), but he simply comes across as a nice bore, and she's someone who is all tragic backstory and no personality.  If Redeeming Love wants to lift our spirits, first it has to care about the characters at its center, and I never got that impression.

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