There's a feedback loop here where the only people who would watch this would rate this very high on principle alone. It is one of the worst movies of 2022 so far, it is not what the rating suggests. This is a Christian movie aimed at Christian mothers who find love and romance in the real world a bit icky and hard to understand. This movie stands to reinforce their believes in a 'traditional' romance that never actually existed, and to teach the next generation the same.

This is a very simplistic story that states that it is based on the book of Hosea. Actually doing so would be narrative suicide. You can say many things about the Bible, but a "great story" isn't one of them. Hosea is an impenetrable mess of a story that is so unclear that no writer or actor could portray it. It uses a few verses here and there as some general plot points, then presents the truly horrific tale that Hosea actually is, in a positive light.

I say this, because this movie portrays itself as an intellectual Christian investigation of how love conquers all. It does this by citing the Bible to let you know that this is a movie that's not only safe to let your tortured daughter watch, but it's maybe something she should watch given that it must be educational.

This is a truly terrible movie, with underlying tones that are deeply unsettling. It's scarily misogynistic, and is a morality tale in that you should believe the opposite of whatever the main characters believe.

One very biblical thing to happen is that the protagonist, a prostitute, finds her estranged abusive father unwittingly becomes her client. Her reaction to this is to intentionally hate-fuck him, and give him a great time to punish him. How does this punish him? Because he finds out the morning after and kills himself due to shame.

As I said earlier, I can definitely see this as something a Christian mother lets her daughter watch when she's older to teach (shock) her into believing a good Christian girl shouldn't have sex or you'll turn into one of this filthy whores reviled by everyone and the right man is the man who loves and serves you - but refuses to have sex with you. After you're married this man, you may never divorce, because divorce leads to girls not having father figures who stop them from having sex. Without a father, girls turn into fifthly whores. Oh, and you might have to fuck your dad at some point, so best not to risk divorce just in case.

The only saving grace is that, as Owen Swart pointed out, many scenes, and the overlying romance, is softcore Christian porn. That daughter from earlier probably has this on DVD and watches it over and over, but not for the reason her mother thinks. After the initial confronting story, she'll certainly be filing a lot away in the wank bank for later. That will genuinely teach her more about herself than this movie ever will.

Redeeming Love looks great. It features great locations shot with great cinematography, but that’s about all director D.J. Caruso can do to entice us to keep watching. It’s terrific to see a story unfolding in a non-CGI, true-to-life setting, even if it’s Cape Town standing in for California (but then some of the greatest westerns were filmed in Europe, so there’s that), but while this movie arguably achieves the western look, it fails to conjure up any sort of western feel.

The script concerns a Hooker with a Heart of Gold known as Angel, who is so sought after that the local Madame, who calls herself Duchess, holds a daily raffle to determine which lucky slack-jawed gold miners – there is more than one winner per day – get to hold sexual congress with her. This is such a cumbersome arrangement that it actually gets in the way of the plot, so that co-writers Francine Rivers and Caruso Hand Wave it not long after they have introduced it.

So-called “dirt farmer” Michael Hosea becomes smitten with Angel, so what does he do to get near her? Does he buy all the numbers in the raffle? Does he have the raffle rigged? No and no; he simply “pays double”. That’s it. Why this hasn’t occurred to at least some of the yokels who form a daily scrum outside the brothel is anybody’s guess. Another good question is where Michael, who is not a miner, finds enough “gold dust” to gain access to Angel on three different occasions.

Angel wants nothing to do with Michael owing to a deep-seated hatred and distrust of men, which is established in a series of flashbacks that are so many and so long they could make up an entire, separate movie all by themselves. They are also the reason that Redeeming Love unnecessarily breaks the 120-minute mark. But the oddest part about these flashbacks is that they show Angel escaping a life of compulsory whoredom only to enter a life of voluntary whoredom. Twice. Maybe even thrice, but that last time is once again against her will. In any case, it gets to be quite repetitive after a while.

It is only after Angel gets the tar beaten out of her by the Duchess’s lackey Magowan that she relents and agrees to marry Michael – but first he has to pay off her “debt” to the Duchess, and the irony that he literally buys Angel off in order to make an honest woman out of her is lost on Michael and Caruso alike.

Redeeming Love’s greatest achievement, other than its photography, is how well it masks its biblical pedigree. According to Wikipedia this is a “Christian Western” based on an homonymous novel by Rivers (unread by me, though it wouldn’t surprise if she had first published it under the pseudonym F.R. Ancine), which in turn is inspired by an obscure Old Testament book – not that you would even guess at any of this by watching the movie, and that’s actually a good thing. It may be long and boring, but at least it’s not overtly preachy.