An embittered ex-convict finds new purpose in his life when he’s forced to care for his adoring and adorable pre-school niece in “Abandoned Man.”

This Around the World with Netflix melodrama is an Istanbul tale that never quite rises to the level of “weeper.”

Çagri Vila Lostuvali’s film, titled “Metruk Adam” in Turkish, traffics in cliches and traverses a well-worn “redemption story” path in a narrative in which we can’t help but believe the wrong character is “redeemed.”

Because Baran (Mert Ramazan Demir) has every right to be bitter. He was 14 when his drunken older father Fatih killed somebody with the family car. Baran’s dad insists the kid take the rap rather than “ruin your brother’s future.”

What the hell?

The kid grows up in the horrors of a Turkish prison. And our director and her screenwriters know the rep those instititutions have. They don’t need to have seen “Midnight Express.” Or “Airplane!”

Baran is released 15 years later and tries to give Fatih (Edip Tepeli) the brush off. But the guilt-ridden sibling, an engineer, married with a little girl, drops to his knees and begs.

It is little Lidya (Ada Erma) who seals the deal. She and her stuffed giraffe Baby are too cute to resist. Her Mom, Arzu (Burcu Cavrar), on the other hand, couldn’t be less welcoming. She apparently doesn’t know how Baran ended up in prison. She just knows the brother that she married has a drinking problem and that’s put the family in a bind.

Baran would rather be homeless than take their charity, and all of Fatih’s pleas fall on deaf ears.

“You can’t beg your way out of this one,” Baran mutters (in Turkish with subtitles, or dubbed).

His hope is to use the auto repair skills he learned in prison to open his own garage with fellow ex-con Esat (Rahimcan Kapkap). But the one they have their eye is already rented. Or is it? Ex-con Baran is naive to the con artists of the outside world and loses his cash.

And Esat, brother Fatih and Esat’s hardcase boss (Ercan Kesal) can’t or won’t stake him.

Homeless and unemployed, all Baran needs is for his drunken brother to crash the family car, kill his wife, put himself in a coma and leave Baran to take care of a pre-schooler.

One melodramatic trial after another faces our hero — beaten up on the job cleaning toilets at a nightclub, losing the chance at more than one rentable garage. The scripted responses to these trials can seem Pollyannaish and simplistic. The filmmaking is competent but never more than pedestrian.

A flashback shows the horrors of Baran and Esat’s early prison life and the reason our hero says “When you take the life of another, you carry their coffin.”

Only Lidya can soften the hard-hearted garage boss, and Baran, who takes her in even though he’s homeless and has to take liberties with other folks’ property to keep her.

“The right path is under the shadow of what’s wrong.”

But too many incidents and “tests” feel contrived, too many characters lean on the phrase “I’m begging you” too many times to count, and the whole enterprise barely rises above insipid as things turn cloying.

Our “Abandoned Man” is never moved to tears, and neither are we. And as for “redemption,” his dead-weight, sheltered and rehab avoiding brother is the natural candidate for that.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Mert Ramazan Demir, Ada Erma, Rahimcan Kapkap, Burcu Cavrar, Edip Tepeli and
Ercan Kesal

Credits: Directed by Çagri Vila Lostuvali, scripted by Murat Uyurkulak and Deniz Madanoglu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:31