‘Love Hurts’ Review: Ke Huy Quan’s Hollywood Comeback Takes a Hit
Ouch.
Few recent Hollywood success stories have felt as genuinely heart-warming as “The Goonies” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” star Ke Huy Quan’s heralded return to acting in 2023’s Best Picture winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Quan’s eventual awards run was the stuff of dreams: Giddy reunions with Harrison Ford, incredible stories about his multi-faceted career, beaming appearances at all the big events, all topped off with his very own Best Supporting Actor win at the Oscars. Even better? The role he won for, as the soulful, striving Waymond Wang was a good one, a worthy one, a complex one.
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So that Quan would become a hot commodity again was both totally correct and completely expected. Who wouldn’t want to spend more time with this star? And while the actor has enjoyed consistent work since his big win, Jonathan Eusebio’s “Love Hurts” offered the actor something new (and, we’re guessing, quite appealing): his first leading role. Too bad that nothing else in Eusebio’s first directorial outing is up to snuff with Quan’s star power.
The story itself — from a script written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore — is intriguing enough. In “Love Hurts,” Quan plays Marvin Gable, a seemingly mild-mannered Milwaukee real estate agent who previously served as a stone-cold killer for his gangster brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu, toeing the line between scary and funny in a way the rest of the film can’t match). Marvin has given all that up, however, and now delights in a relatively quiet life, mostly spent baking cookies for open houses and bonding with his boss (Quan’s “Goonies” co-star Sean Astin) and sarcastic assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton).
Marvin is all about catchphrases. He loves his life! He “wants a home for you”! But all that good cheer and peppy attitude hides a darkness in Marvin, and when his brother’s old lawyer Rose (Ariana DeBose, certainly having more fun here than in “Kraven the Hunter”) returns from the dead, he’s forced to confront what that means. (She makes her presence known by sending out valentines to Marvin and her enemies, one of many attempts to establish the film as Valentine’s Day-centric that offers no material value beyond an ability to deck out its marketing with frills and candy hearts.)
The particulars of Rose and her death aren’t so essential — at least, they’re not handled that way by the film’s script, which seems to actively loathe particulars and motivations of all stripes — but we’re meant to understand that everyone definitely thought she was dead because of a financial crime she committed against Knuckles, Marvin was believed to have done it himself, and now she’s back … for revenge? Sure!
Of course, this all complicates Marvin’s life, mostly because he also loves Rose (the pair have a friendly, cute chemistry, but they don’t carry much romantic spark) and because his brother has dispatched a pack of his best baddies (including Marshawn Lynch, Mustafa Shakir, Cam Gigandet, and André Eriksen) to bring the duo in to pay for their crimes. It’s a simple enough conceit, but one made consistently confusing by a distinct lack of energy, excitement, and cohesive editing. Never before has 83 minutes felt so very long.
A seemingly tight budget keeps the film’s locations woefully limited; we mostly travel between cookie-cutter track homes (Marvin’s own, plus one he’s trying to sell), Marvin and Ashley’s similarly anonymous office, and Knuckles’ lair (an intriguing, if ultimately confusing mash-up of video store and martial arts studio, which is only ever inhabited by his goons). And while that would be forgivable — make do with what you’ve got! — it’s indicative of a larger, weirder problem.
They never leave Milwaukee. No, no, to be clear: they never left Milwaukee. Yes, Marvin has struck out on his own to build an independent life, free of his brother and his violent crimes, intent on shaking off his past as a contract killer, and yet … he still lives in the same small city (I checked: Milwaukee has a population just over half a million people) where Knuckles and his crime syndicate rule with an iron fist. And a massive part of his identity is tied up in his real estate work, which involves plastering his face all over every ad he can afford. What exactly is the plan here?
Even weirder: Rose, who everyone believes is dead, has also been living in Milwaukee this whole time, complete with her own apartment and a bartending gig at a local dive. One of Knuckles’ many lackeys ultimately finds Rose by … going to her apartment building, where her name is prominently displayed on her mailbox? Again, isn’t this woman supposed to be dead?
It’s the sort of mindless plot point that shouldn’t have made it into the script’s first draft, let alone the final film. That and other wacky plot holes rankle and bother, and because the rest of the film itself so frequently fails to entertain, audience members will likely find themselves pondering these issues and questions when, at the very least, they should be distracted by butt-kicking action. If your action film starring a beloved Hollywood star that runs less than 90 minutes mostly feels like an exercise in iffy screenwriting, there’s something very wrong here.
And the action? Ah, well. Even the more clever sequences — an early battle that sees Lynch and Eriksen destroying Marvin’s kitchen (complete with our star being tossed into a fridge) is quite good, but the big final battles fall short — are hampered by an over-reliance on bone-crunching sound design. None of it ever feels fun, because it sounds just gruesome. Nifty perspectives — from inside the fridge! from inside a microwave! — that would otherwise feel snappy and exciting, evidence of Eusebio’s prodigious stunt skills, instead fall victim to foley design that mostly seems to want to tickle our gag reflexes. I didn’t see a single broken bone throughout the entire run of “Love Hurts,” but I sure heard dozens of them snap.
The humor is just as limp. Tipton and Shakir make off with the only purposely funny subplot, as Ashley’s woe-is-me attitude finds an unlikely paramour in Shakir’s too-serious poet-killer act (as “The Raven,” the man throws feathers as weapons!). The wacky, wink-at-the-camera story they weave is a highlight of the film lacking them, and still more evidence of how deeply “Love Hurts” lets down its amiable, open leading man.
This one? It hurts, and for all the wrong reasons.
Grade: C-
Universal Pictures will release “Love Hurts” in theaters on Friday, February 7.
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