‘Love Hurts’ Review: Oscar Winner Ke Huy Quan Gets His First Starring Role, and It’s Woefully Underwritten
Ke Huy Quan has had a weird career. He made two widely seen studio hits as a child, endearing himself to a generation as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” Then he disappeared for a couple of decades, eventually resurfacing in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The Academy so loved Quan’s comeback, they gave him an Oscar, but it hasn’t been easy finding a big-screen follow-up for an actor who’s beloved by all, but severely limited in his range.
In “Love Hurts,” Quan gets a welcome chance to stretch, playing two polar-opposite personae: Everyone in Milwaukee thinks Marvin Gable is a nice-guy Realtor, when in fact, he’s an ex-hitman who switched jobs after being ordered to snuff the love of his life, Rose (another Oscar winner, Ariana DeBose). In his old line of work, eliminating folks for money-laundering brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu), Marvin could kill without question. Now, he bakes heart-shaped cookies and serves them to his clients.
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While Quan isn’t especially convincing in either extreme, it’s refreshing to see him treated as a bona fide movie star — a corrective to the broken-English “pidgin” hole Hollywood put him in as a kid. The next Jackie Chan he is not, however, even if that’s half the concept for this flashy but far-fetched Valentine’s Day stunt show, whose connection to the holiday is about as tenuous as its relationship to reality.
The rest of the pitch reads “from the producers of ‘Nobody’ and ‘Violent Night,’” which gives audiences a slightly better idea of what to expect from a movie that strains to fill the space between fight scenes. You can’t sell “Love Hurts” on the reputation of its director, stunt veteran Jonathan Eusebio, since he’s never overseen a feature before. But there’s no denying that producer David Leitch and his team of trained doubles and second unit wizards (operating under the 87North banner) have revitalized the action genre in recent years. Now it’s turn to give another team player a shot at the top.
The trouble with stunt pros stepping up to direct is they’re inclined to draw attention to the stuff that’s supposed to be invisible. Most audiences want action to feel like action, whereas Eusebio makes it look too much like choreography: No matter how dynamic, every fight scene seems rehearsed to within an inch of its life. Punch, block; kick, block; stab, block and so on. Does Quan actually know martial arts? It’s not clear. For “Love Hurts,” he just had to memorize the moves, block-block-blocking all the blows that are thrown his way, while the camera does flashy things, like film a skirmish from inside a microwave.
To make us care, screenwriters Matthew Murray and Josh Stoddard (working together) and Luke Passmore (on a separate pass) have concocted a feeble romance. Back when Marvin worked for Knuckles (Daniel Wu), his last big job was to drive Rose out to an unmarked grave and dump her in it. But Marvin had feelings for Rose (sentenced for stealing $4 million), so he faked her death and then tendered his resignation.
Now Rose is back, sending hand-crafted valentines to everyone in Knuckles’ outfit, including Marvin, who’s spent the intervening time in his insipid new career, helping bland couples buy their dream homes. His boss, appearing in two scenes, is played by Quan’s “Goonies” co-star Sean Astin, in a cowboy hat and gratuitous Southern accent. Meanwhile, in what passes for a joke, Drew Scott (one half of the “Property Brothers” pair) appears as Marvin’s real-estate nemesis, a karate-chopping rival who comes across infinitely more aggressive than Quan.
That’s part of the problem with “Love Hurts”: It’s hard to accept Quan as a lethal killer. In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the Daniels leaned into that absurdity, staging an altercation where he cracked his fanny pack like a whip. Here, Quan looks like he couldn’t hurt a fly. Practically all he does is deflect, while much bigger goons throw him around sets that look about as lived in as your typical Ikea showroom. Marvin’s oversized real-estate office was designed to be destroyed by the blade-wielding “Raven” (Mustafa Shakir). His impeccably neat home was meant for Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch and André Eriksen to show up and smash furniture.
Since there’s a loose Valentine’s theme at play, Raven takes time to recite poetry, which earns him a fan in Marvin’s sensitive co-worker Ashley (Lio Tipton). Erikson’s character is trying to patch things up with his wife. And there’s the matter of Marvin’s longtime crush on Rose, which surely deserved a flashback of some kind to establish their chemistry. Instead, characters speak in long expository stretches, explaining for viewers’ benefit how Rose stole all that cash — while failing to make any of it remotely believable.
The convoluted plot smacks of cutesy ’90s-era rom-coms like “Grosse Pointe Blank” and “A Life Less Ordinary,” though it’s obviously just a clothesline on which to hang a series of low-stakes fight scenes. If this was supposed to be Eusebio’s big chance to prove himself at the helm, it’s hard to imagine settling for such a banal assortment of set-pieces — an office, two kitchens and a neon-lit video store — using weapons that include a pencil, a framed “employee of the month” certificate and a boba straw.
What’s love got to do with it? Certainly not enough to hurt. It’s the bad acting and across-the-board implausibility are downright painful.
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