Redeeming Love Review: Faith-Based Drama Mansplains Redemption and Spirituality

The film is too narrow-minded to explore the notion that a saint-like man may want to satisfy his normal carnal desires.

Redeeming Love
Photo: Universal Pictures

By drawing inspiration from the biblical Book of Hosea, D.J. Caruso’s adaptation of Francine Rivers’s novel Redeeming Love views the Old West through a wildly reductive and moralistic lens. No sooner do the opening credits finish rolling than we’re greeted with a cavalcade of greedy, lustful men consumed by their prospecting for gold in California in 1850, intent on spending every hard-earned penny on booze, sex, and gambling. As the town’s name, Pair-a-dice (yes, really), suggests, this place is a den of perpetual sin, with seemingly every resident, man and woman alike, framed as a dishonest, hedonistic scoundrel.

That is, all but the puritanical, unflappably optimistic Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis), whose doe-eyed presence would see him shot dead in most westerns before the end of the first reel. In Redeeming Love, though, the young farmer’s almost otherworldly gentility and selflessness mark him as the epitome of virtue, rather than as a simpleton who could never realistically survive a tough existence on the frontier. While he isn’t judgmental, the film implicitly pits his wholesomeness in direct opposition to the immorality of everyone else in town.

After riding into Pair-a-dice for supplies, Michael catches a glimpse of the town’s most popular sex worker, Angel (Abigail Cowen), and decides in that moment that he will save her from this Sodom of the Old West. Upon later meeting her at the local brothel, Michael tells Angel that he only wants to talk and lets her in on his plans to marry her. Though his initial impulses clearly arise as a response to her physical beauty, Redeeming Love sees Michael as far too noble to be driven by such ostensibly base desires. No, in the eyes of the film, Michael’s motives stem only from a moral righteousness that requires him to rescue Angel.

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At first, Angel rejects Michael’s plan, rightly noting that he barely knows her. Despite the reasons behind her resistance, he makes no genuine attempts to learn more about her, her past, or what she wants out of life, instead continuing to deliver his promises of love with the same calm, sociopathic tone of a creeper who doesn’t know how to take no for an answer.

Redeeming Love draws clear parallels between Michael’s love of Angel and that of Christ and his followers. It’s particularly evident in the patience he shows with her after she finally accepts his proposition, and even more so after he repeatedly forgives her when, in fits of self-loathing, she temporarily returns to sex work. But the film’s characterization of Michael as a symbolic messiah becomes increasingly muddled as their relationship turns sexual, and his seemingly pure motivations and behavior become more recognizably human.

This change in Michael, after months of telling Angel that he wasn’t ready to go to bed with her, could have led to some sort of internal conflict over how to reconcile his human desires with his divine love—the sort of struggle portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. But Redeeming Love is too narrow-minded to explore the notion that the saint-like Michael may want to satisfy his normal carnal desires. And rather than grappling with how that kind of man might presumably adapt to or exist in this Wild West setting, the film thoughtlessly positions him simply as a magical panacea to Angel’s past sins and suffering.

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Score: 
 Cast: Abigail Cowen, Tom Lewis, Famke Janssen, Logan Marshall-Green, Nina Dobrev, Livi Birch, Eric Dane, Brandon Auret, Jamie Lee O’Donnell  Director: D.J. Caruso  Screenwriter: D.J. Caruso, Francine Rivers  Distributor: Universal Pictures  Running Time: 134 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2022  Buy: Video

Derek Smith

Derek Smith's writing has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Apollo Guide, and Cinematic Reflections.

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