“Hiding ain’t living.”
Love Hurts is a misconceived action vehicle for Oscar-winning star, Ke Huy Quan. It is a patchwork monster of slapped-together genres given a glitter glaze and a neon gloss. Love Hurts is an awkward action rom-com laden with inexplicable romance, callous characters, dark comedy and cruel, over-the-top, cartoonish violence. There is an abundance of gore running through the length of the feature. Everything is flashy, sparkly, and spectacularly stupid. Decent fight choreography and a charming cameo performance by Sean Astin as well as some good quips can’t save this motion picture from mediocrity. It was splendid to see the scene where two former Goonies reunite, it’s just a shame it had to be in this movie.
Love Hurts is a Universal Pictures production directed by Jonathan Eusebio from a story by Luke Passmore, Matthew Murray, and Josh Stoddard. Ke Huy Quan leads a cast including Marshawn Lynch, Lio Tipton, Cam Gigandet, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Stephanie Sy, Mustafa Shakir, André Eriksen and Rhys Darby along with Sean Astin.
“He was such a beautiful, beautiful monster.”
Marvin Gable (Quan) is a really good realtor, one of Milwaukee’s finest. He loves finding people their forever-homes. The passion he possesses for his profession is unmatched by his co-workers and his depressed assistant, Ashley (Tipton) seems to wilt in the shadow of his success. Driving to work on February 14th, he discovers his visage defaced on every piece of his company’s outdoor advertising. Soon he finds an anonymous letter from an amorous admirer. Before he can put two and two together, he is confronted in his office by the hulking form of a former business associate, Raven (Shakir).
Raven is a warrior-monk, a poet of violence who likes to express himself using the written word and blades. Lots and lots of blades. Clearly Marvin has made a mid-life career change because Raven pulls knife after knife from his voluminous coat, hurling them with great accuracy at the apparently hapless realtor only for Gable to ferociously bat them away with growing confidence. Raven works for Knuckles and wants to know where Rose (DeBose) is. Marvin’s not telling. Their brawl escalates, the cacophony attracting Ashley’s attention. After a violent struggle, the unexpectedly agile Marvin lays his assailant out before Ashley reaches the frosted glass doors of his enclosure. Going with subterfuge, Marvin begs off the party, telling Ashley that he’s not feeling well and returning home but not that someone has tried to murder him mere moments ago. He decides to keep this set of salient facts from his assistant while hiding Raven’s unconscious form from her.
Before he can escape, he is waylaid by his boss, Cliff (Astin), who showers him with compliments and presents him with an award for his sales acumen. Marvin honestly expresses his heartfelt gratitude and then borrows Cliff’s car so he can complete his getaway.
Marvin races home for some first aid and his go-bag only to find two more home invaders, Otis (Eriksen) and King (Lynch). They work for Merlo (Gigandet) and they have ALSO been tasked with discovering the whereabouts of Rose. They think that Marvin has been less-than-honest with their employer and have decided the best plan of action is to beat the truth out of him. An absurdly bloody brawl breaks out and the diminutive pugilist is surprisingly not only able to hold off his attackers but make his escape. Nimbly utilizing fence posts for leverage, Marvin hops from one backyard to the next and the next slipping away from King, who calls him a “Monkey Ninja-God”.
Marvin hits the street, gets to the corner, tries to catch his breath and is tazed into unconsciousness. What is Marvin hiding about his past? When were Raven and Marvin partners? Who is Knuckles? Why is Ashley so depressed? Where is Rose? If you are at all interested in the answers to those questions, please see Love Hurts.
“No one has ever understood my words.”
“No words have ever understood me.”
At the heart of Love Hurts is a kernel of a good idea or two. The outlines of the elevator pitch are clear: “Hitman attempts absolution through mundanity and a normal, modern existence but the love of his life draws him back into a world of crime and violence and he abandons his redemption to follow the dictates of his heart” but there’s something off about the execution. The jokes and the action aren’t landing on the right beats. They’re also not landing on the off-beats. There’s just something wrong.
With the exception of the newfound lovers and Sean Astin’s Cliff, every main character including Marvin has a degree of horrible sadism running right beneath the surface which explodes periodically. The fight scenes lean into that as the actors are imbued with a rubbery, Merrie Melodies cartoonish invulnerability while they battle. Repeated knife wounds, broken limbs, and blood loss are only relevant when the plot requires them to be, which is to say, not too often.
Every character is paper thin. There is no backstory setting up the key romance of the movie. In the Marvin montage setting up his role as a realtor, the opportunity to show Ashley’s mounting depression is missed. Many characters are driven by silly decisions that they undertake without any thought.
Like her similar character in Kraven the Hunter, Ariana DeBose once again finds herself playing the “amorphous action chick of unknown provenance”. There is nothing established in the movie to explain the skill-set Rose displays. The basis for her abilities is neither shown on screen nor even given a flippant line of dialogue to wave them away.
Parts of the premise are patently absurd. So, Marvin has left the life- not even the gangster life, but the (presumably more secret) hitman life. He’s on the lam and goes undercover as a manager of realtors while not changing his name in the slightest, then plasters his face on advertisements all over town. Yet the precipitating incident of the movie is the cards that Rose leaves leading up to Valentine’s Day, not the POSTERS with his NAME on them giving away his location? That’s just silly. There seems to be so much that this movie needed that may have been left on the cutting room floor while so much it DIDN’T need remained in the final cut.
Like a less-funny, uglier, bloodier, and clumsy Jackie Chan movie. Love Hurts stumbles through the motions, trying to wink at the audience but mostly poking itself in the eye. The expression is, “Goonies never say die”, but Love Hurts may very well kill Ke Huy Quan’s resurgent career.
Love Hurts is in theatres 2/7/25
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Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher