''Redeeming Love'' is a 2022 American
Christian Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
romance film
Romance films or movies involve romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theatres or on television that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters. Typically their journey ...
directed by
D.J. Caruso, who co-wrote the screenplay with
Francine Rivers
Francine Sandra Rivers (born 1947) is an American author of fiction with Christian themes, including inspirational romance novels. Prior to becoming a born-again Christian in 1986, Rivers wrote historical romance novels. She is best known for ...
. The film is based on Rivers'
1991 novel of the same name, which was based on the Biblical
story of Hosea, and is set in the American
Old West
The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...
during the
California Gold Rush. It stars
Abigail Cowen
Abigail Cowen (born March 18, 1998) is an American actress and model. She is known for playing Dorcas in '' Chilling Adventures of Sabrina'' and Bloom in Netflix's live-action adaptation of ''Winx Club'' titled '' Fate: The Winx Saga''.
Early ...
,
Tom Lewis and
Logan Marshall-Green.
The film was co-produced by
Pinnacle Peak Pictures
Pinnacle Peak Pictures (formerly Pure Flix Entertainment) is an American evangelical Christian film industry, Christian film production company, production and distribution company, distribution studio founded by David A. R. White and Russell Wo ...
,
Mission Pictures International
Mission Pictures International (MPI) is a foreign sales, finance, and distribution company specializing in family and faith-based entertainment for mainstream audiences worldwide.
Since Mission’s inception in 2008 CEO/Founder Cindy Bond has be ...
, and Nthibah Pictures, and was filmed in
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
. It was theatrically released by
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...
on January 21, 2022, and received generally negative reviews from critics, though it was received better by audiences. ''REdeeming Love'' was nominated for the
GMA Dove Award
A Dove Award is an accolade by the Gospel Music Association (GMA) of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the Christian music industry. The awards are presented annually. Formerly held in Nashville, Tennessee, the Dove Awards ...
for Inspirational Film/Series of the Year at the
2022 GMA Dove Awards.
Plot
During the 1850s, a beautiful young woman named Angel works as a prostitute in the fictional California town of Pair-a-Dice. Despite being the object of desire for the local men, she survives through hatred and self-loathing. Meanwhile, a visiting farmer named Michael Hosea prays to
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
and asks for help finding a wife. Later that day, he sees Angel walking through town and falls in
love at first sight
Love at first sight is a personal experience as well as a common trope in literature: a person or character feels an instant, extreme, and ultimately long-lasting romantic attraction for a stranger upon first seeing that stranger. Described by p ...
.
Flashbacks reveal that Angel's real name is Sarah and that she knows only abuse from men. As a child, she overhears her father, Alex Stafford, saying that she should never have been born. Sarah learns that her father is married and her mother, Mae, is his
mistress
Mistress is the feminine form of the English word "master" (''master'' + ''-ess'') and may refer to:
Romance and relationships
* Mistress (lover), a term for a woman who is in a sexual and romantic relationship with a man who is married to a ...
. Alex eventually cuts off support for Mae, obliging her to become a prostitute and eventually become sick and die. Distraught, Sarah rejects her mother's
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
faith. Afterward, Mae's
pimp sells an 8-year-old Sarah to a man named Duke, who renames her "Angel" and forces her into prostitution. One night, when Angel is a teenager, one of her customers is her father, and she knowingly has sex with him to punish him for how he treated her mother. He does not recognize her, but when he finds out the next morning, he commits
suicide. This prompts Angel to escape from Duke. She arrives in California with hopes of beginning a new life but, penniless, once again becomes a prostitute at a brothel there.
In the present day, when Michael enters Angel's room and tells her he wants to marry her, she is thrown off-guard but remains aloof toward him. After she is nearly beaten to death by a brothel guard, she agrees to marry Michael and leaves with him as he nurses her back to health. Michael continues to surprise her as he claims to love her as his wife, and refuses to have sex with her. Afraid to trust him, she runs away at her first opportunity, but Michael finds her and convinces her to come home.
As the two begin their life on the farm, Angel develops feelings for Michael but runs away again when she realizes that he wants children, as she believes herself to be sterile. She gets a ride with Michael's brother-in-law, Paul, who hates her because of her past and demands she pay him for the ride by having sex with him. Back in the city, Angel reluctantly returns to prostitution. When Michael arrives at the
brothel, she is relieved to return home with him. He forgives her, and their relationship begins to grow based on honesty and affection.
As Angel falls in love with Michael, she becomes convinced that he will be happier married to someone else who can have children, leading her to leave him once more. Having learned to cook while with Michael, she is able to get a job at a cafe in the city rather than returning to prostitution. Eventually, she by chance encounters Duke, who has moved to California. He attempts to force her to become a prostitute again. Desperate, she regains the faith she lost after her mother's death and tells an audience at the brothel about Duke's sexual trafficking of young girls. Duke denies the allegations and attempts to murder Angel, but an African American man, who is implied to be an old friend of Michael's, subdues him and the captive girls escape into the audience, resulting in Duke being lynched by a mob. Afterward, Angel starts a successful mission to help rehabilitate other young prostitutes.
Three years later, Paul finally comes to find her and tells her that Michael still loves her. Angel returns home to Michael, offering her love and telling him that her real name is Sarah. They reunite and are shown to eventually have children.
Cast
*
Abigail Cowen
Abigail Cowen (born March 18, 1998) is an American actress and model. She is known for playing Dorcas in '' Chilling Adventures of Sabrina'' and Bloom in Netflix's live-action adaptation of ''Winx Club'' titled '' Fate: The Winx Saga''.
Early ...
as Angel
*
Tom Lewis as Michael Hosea
*
Logan Marshall-Green as Paul
*
Wu Kexi as Mai Ling
*Livi Birch as Sarah Stafford
*
Famke Janssen
Famke Beumer Janssen (; born ) is a Dutch actress. She played Xenia Onatopp in '' GoldenEye'' (1995), Jean Grey / Phoenix in the ''X-Men'' film series (2000–2014), and Lenore Mills in the ''Taken'' film trilogy (2008–2014). In 2008, she ...
as Duchess
*
Nina Dobrev
Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva ( bg, Николина Каменова Добрева, ; born January 9, 1989), credited professionally as Nina Dobrev ( ), is a Canadian actress. She is best known for portraying Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce o ...
as Mae
*
Eric Dane
Eric William Dane (born November 9, 1972) is an American actor. After multiple television roles in the 1990s and 2000s, which included his recurring role as Jason Dean in ''Charmed'', Dane was cast as Dr. Mark Sloan on the ABC medical drama te ...
as Duke
Production
Filming concluded in
Cape Town, South Africa in March 2020. The film itself was announced in April 2020, with
D.J. Caruso directing and
Roma Downey
Roma Burnett (née Downey) is an actress, producer, and author from Derry, Northern Ireland. She produced the mini-series ''The Bible'' for the History Channel and also appeared in it as Mary, mother of Jesus. For nine seasons she played Moni ...
and Francine Rivers executive producing.
Rivers also wrote the script, along with Caruso.
''Redeeming Love'' marks the second collaboration between producers Cindy Bond and Simon Swart, the first being 2018's ''
I Can Only Imagine''. Wayne Fitzjohn, Michael Scott, and Brittany Yost also produce.
The film was released digitally on February 8, 2022, and was released on
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...
and
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
on March 8, 2022 by
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (formerly Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Video, MCA/Universal Home Video, MCA Home Video, MCA Videodisc and MCA Videocassette, Inc.) is the home video distribution division of Am ...
.
Release
The film was released in theaters on January 21, 2022 in the United States.
The film was released for
VOD platforms on February 8, 2022, followed by a
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...
and
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
release on March 8, 2022.
Reception
Box office
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...
put the film went into
wide release In the American motion picture industry, a wide release (short for nationwide release) is a film playing at the same time at cinemas in most markets across the country. This is in contrast to the formerly common practice of a roadshow theatrical r ...
, in 1,903 theaters, on January 21, 2022. Projected to gross less than $5 million domestically in its first three days,
it earned $3.5 million in its opening weekend, finishing fourth at the box office. The film dropped out of the box office top ten in its fourth weekend, finishing twelfth with $354,835. The film was a
box office bomb
A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...
, taking in $9.46 million worldwide, against a budget of $30 million.
Critical response
On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the film has a score of 32% based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."
References
External links
*
{{D. J. Caruso
2022 romantic drama films
2022 Western (genre) films
2020s American films
2020s English-language films
American romantic drama films
American Western (genre) films
Book of Hosea
Films about the California Gold Rush
Films about prostitution in the United States
Films based on adaptations
Films based on American novels
Films based on the Hebrew Bible
Films based on romance novels
Films based on Western (genre) novels
Films directed by D. J. Caruso
Films produced by David A. R. White
Films scored by Brian Tyler
Films set in the 1850s
Films set in Boston
Films set in California
Films set in San Francisco
Films shot in South Africa
Incest in film
Pure Flix Entertainment films
Universal Pictures films