Redeeming Love

The romance is good and easy to enjoy. It seems since the COVID pandemic over two years ago, there have been few romantic movies while there should have been more. After all, not everyone is a superhero to save the world but almost anyone can use more warmth from love.

I also appreciate the realistic backdrop of justice, moral, and even empowerment of education.

Characters, dresses, scenes, and musics range from nice to impressive to gorgeous.

The rating is not 8 for the love story is not remarkably new or deep, which I admit is rather tricky since new or deep does not necessarily make a good romance.

I came into this not knowing what to expect and came out liking what I saw.

For me I saw a movie about how hard it is to tear yourself away from the life you knew, even if it's poisoning you. This movie is a good example of how hard it is to do that, even if you have a great support system.

It's supposed to be a romance film, and I guess I saw that, but I was more thinking about this is a movie about what it takes to love yourself.

Well done!

I went to end not knowing how the movie would compare to the amazing book. But I was astounded by how well this movie was done. All the characters were perfect, the scenery was amazing and the message of love, forgiveness, faith, and more forgiveness came through. This is a true love story of love stories. Not too often do you get the audience in the theater to clap and to yell out on certain scenes, but in this one they did. I would say this movie is almost perfect.

Most readers will agree that books are better than movies and that is the case here. If you didn't read the book and just went to see the movie, you would get a movie for the time and the money. If you read the book, like I did, you will feel cheated of some of the most crucial moments from the book. I don't feel that there were any needless parts in the movie. I can't even tell you how you could've added more. But I do feel like this would've thrived better if it would've been a mini series. There is literally no time to develop character relationships. It also lacked a lot of the faith and the connectivity to the Bible that it's famous for.

The actors were wonderful though. The actor who played Michael is smaller than described in the book but you quickly connect with him. The actress who played Angel was terrific also! Duke is dashing but as monstrous as the book portrays him to be.

Overall I'm not sorry I saw it but I will certainly go back to the book and likely won't need to see the movie beyond maybe one more showing.

The overriding themes of sex trafficking and GBV made the more preachy parts of this bearable for me. Shockingly, these horrific things still happen today, even though a lot of people prefer not to acknowledge it, and walk around with their eyes closed. In the beautiful country of SA where this was filmed, a Mother and her boyfriend are currently on trial for selling her 10 year old daughter. Truth can be stranger than fiction.

I am an Atheist, but I can still appreciate a good story of undying love and redemption. I'm not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears at the end. Even though I was a bit sceptical of the very final scenes, I was glad it ended on a happy note.

I'm giving a star for the stunning scenery and costumes.