This movie automatically loses a star for never playing Nazareth throughout the entire runtime. Love Hurts, love scars.
We fell in love with Ke Huy Quan back in the ’80s when he played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies. After decades away from the spotlight, he hasn’t skipped a beat, winning an Oscar for his role in the instant classic Everything Everywhere All at Once. Since then, he’s done it all, from a voice role in Kung Fu Panda 4 to a fan-favorite character in season 2 of Marvel’s Loki. Now, he gets to be the leading man he always should have been in a new Universal Pictures action-comedy movie from 87North, the production company behind John Wick, Bullet Train, Violent Night, and The Fall Guy.
While I’ve consistently enjoyed 87North’s movies and their commitment to well-crafted action filmmaking, this is the weakest movie they’ve made. Love Hurts isn’t terrible, but it’s a mediocre take on a story we’ve seen a million times before. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a successful realtor whose past as a violent hitman comes back to haunt him. We’ve seen dozens of movies about people who have left their murderous past behind them only to get sucked back into the action one last time. Remember that Mark Wahlberg movie The Family Plan? Yeah, neither do I. But even last month, Netflix put out Back in Action with Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz that follows this template. Hell, 87North has done this idea already with John Wick and the 2021 Bob Odenkirk action vehicle, Nobody.
Even though this is a done-to-death premise, this movie could have still been good. For a while, it is. The first half hour moves at a fast pace and wastes no time getting into our first fight scene. Love Hurts is a breezy 83-minute movie that anyone can watch and have an acceptable time, even if the writing fails this film. Where doesn’t this movie fail? The action. We know Quan is a multi-talented martial artist. He’s proved it in Everything Everywhere All at Once. He was even an assistant fight choreographer on the first X-Men movie from 2000 and Jet Li’s The One.
We knew we’d be getting great action with him as the lead, and on paper, he’s a perfect fit for 87North. He brings an incredible physicality to the fights. The fights are bloody and rated R without going too overboard with the gore. Much like Jackie Chan, Quan is using improvised weapons and kicking ass with his particular set of skills. The fights are fun to watch. There are two at the beginning and two at the end, which leaves the chunk in the middle section of the movie as the weakest part by default. Fortunately, Love Hurts moves at a quick enough pace that we don’t mind it very much.
But the issue lies everywhere else. The screenplay is borderline terrible. There are moments where the writers have no idea how to give exposition to the audience, so we hear the characters’ internal monologues narrated out loud via a voiceover. That’s the cheapest, laziest way to get information to the audience. Movies like Fight Club, Memento, and American Psycho that use this technique are the exception to this rule. With Love Hurts, the narration shows up inconsistently and is often used to communicate information that is already being shown to us. Whenever the narration arrived, all I could think about was how much better the movie would be if it had shown the information to the audience and gotten us to engage with the movie a bit more.
Instead, we have lazy writing trapped in a stale plot. The situation with the antagonists gets needlessly convoluted at some point. The film should have focused on the main villain, Knuckles, played by Daniel Wu, who reunites with Quan after previously appearing with him in the Disney+ series American Born Chinese. Knuckles is Marvin’s crime boss brother. They have a history together that should be interesting, but the movie doesn’t delve deep enough into this. Knuckles is a disposable villain whose only signature trait is his obsession with boba.
Perhaps the weakest aspect of this film is Ariana DeBose. She’s another Oscar winner, but her post-Oscar career has had its fair share of misses. From Wish to the more recent Kraven the Hunter, she hasn’t had the best roles. This movie seems to think her character is really cool and badass. She often seems like she’s portraying the character with an attempt at being a stone-cold badass with a humorous charm. It doesn’t work. You don’t care about her or her goals. She’s not an interesting character, even though so much of this movie’s story hinges on her actions.
The dramatic moments don’t have a lot of real weight, either. As for our supporting cast, Marshawn Lynch and Rhys Darby play a fun duo of assassins that give Marvin a run for his money. Mustafa Shakir plays a cold-blooded killer with a love of poetry, but his character feels like he belongs in a different movie. Lio Tipton has a storyline that’s more eye-rolling than funny. It’s a shame because of the fun potential Love Hurts had, but ultimately, it doesn’t deliver enough originality despite its excellent fight choreography. The movie is directed by Jonathan Eusebio, a veteran Hollywood fight coordinator who’s worked on countless big movies. He does his best here, but the screenplay never does any of the onscreen talent justice.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Love Hurts review.
