Abigail Cowen and Tom Lewis perform in a scene from “Redeeming Love.”

Ah, January. The month at the movies where studios tend to dump the titles that they don’t have a lot of hope for. That’s not to say every movie that comes out this time of year is trash, but it never bodes well when they do. Unfortunately, “Redeeming Love,” is the latest example of these less-than-stellar films released at the top of the year.

The film is based on the romance novel of the same name written by Francine Rivers (co-writer of the screenplay along with director D.J. Caruso), which is a take on the Old Testament story of Hosea and Gomer. The screen adaptation drips with all the melodrama you would expect from a Hallmark or Lifetime channel movie, only with a bigger budget and marginally better acting. But more money cannot save it from its two-dimensional characters, bad accents and flat storytelling.

Set in Pair-a-dice, California, during the 1850s gold rush, the film follows the story of Angel (Abigail Cowen), a stunning prostitute and object of affection by literally anyone with a Y chromosome who comes within 20 feet of her. One of these doting men, with the most biblical name imaginable and the cleanest farmer you’ll ever see, Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis), spots her one day as she takes her bi-weekly walk through town and is immediately smitten, knowing this is the woman God has sent for him to marry. Getting Angel alone takes some doing. He pays double to “win” the daily lottery the brothel has in place for lucky winners to get a half hour with her, and when he finally meets her, he insists on just talking and getting to know the real her. He promises to marry her and take her away from this life. She, however, is bitterly content where she is and laughs him out of the room.

So he tries again, and Angel again tells him in no uncertain terms that he’s wasting his time (and money). But when he sees her the final time, it is after she’s been badly beaten by one of the strongmen of the brothel. So Michael asks her again, and this time through her swollen face, she accepts with a “sure.”

Michael takes her home to his farm and promises to give her a good and honest life. But Angel knows that she cannot possibly make him happy.

Throughout the film, we see flashbacks of Angel’s life. We see that her real name is Sarah and that she and her mother were cast out of their home back East after her father cut them off (she was illegitimate). Her mother, forced into prostitution in order to provide what little she could, eventually dies and at the age of 9 Sarah is sold to a Boston brothel run by the skeezy, but classy-looking, Duke (Eric Dane). And so began her life, and her turning away from her faith and anything that remotely reminded her of the life she had.

Cowen and Lewis are well matched, and there is definitely a mild spark between them, but it feels very safe and almost too tame for a romance. Lewis also has some slip ups with his accent that deviate between a general, and broadly Southern to one tinted by his native British.

Dane also struggles with his Irish brogue, which follows more stereotypical patterns that cause him to sound more cartoonish when he is meant to be menacing.

He and Angel’s madam in California, Duchess (Famke Janssen), are the standard villains you’d get if you could pick them off the rack at a department store. They have no depth, nor does, really, any character in the film. The story arc is so predictable and on the nose that it led to the biggest eye roll I’ve given a movie in recent memory.

Cowen tries to give Angel some depth, given her incredibly tragic backstory and the abusive events that occur throughout the course of the film, but there’s so little nuance to the performance, and she is either too sullen or too modernly funny to really make it work.

The film lacks any kind of nuance. It is clear, though, that being a prostitute is bad, and one must leave that life of sin for the wholesome life of working the land, being married and having children. There is no alternative.

The story wanders a lot, too. Many things seem to work out, with another incident waiting to land in the way and make the film unnecessarily longer — perhaps in an attempt to find deeper meaning or to simply throw in another lingering shot of Cowen lying in repose with that perfectly wavy, golden hair catching every ray of light just so.

While the production value is much greater than the cable channel versions of similar stories, it doesn’t save “Redeeming Love” from falling into the sins of supermarket paperbacks.

“Redeeming Love”

134 minutes

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexual content, partial nudity, and strong violent content.

2 stars