Ke Huy Quan plays a happy-go-lucky real estate agent named Marvin Gable whose past life as a hitman comes back to haunt him in “Love Hurts.” The action-comedy goes hard on elaborately choreographed fight sequences and violent, bloody deaths. Anything from a boba straw to a cookie cutter is fair game in these gruesome showdowns.
But while the derivative and cartoonish spectacle can be fun and impressive at times, “Love Hurts” just doesn’t work in the end, hampered by a lack of directorial vision, comedic pacing and an ensemble of caricatures instead of characters. “Love Hurts” may only run 83 minutes, but if you’ve seen the 2:41 trailer, you’ve kind of seen it all.
It had a lot going for it too, including two recent Oscar winners in Quan and “West Side Story’s” Ariana DeBose in the lead roles, a fine premise and a hoard of fun actors in the ensemble. Sean Astin plays Quan’s boss at the real estate agency, a stunty, nostalgia play for “Goonies” fans that actually gives the film a rare, touching, authentic moment, and Marshawn Lynch, who is proving himself to be a comedic gem no matter the material. But there’s something immensely off about the tone, which isn’t clever or silly enough to be funny, and its ham-fisted attempts to tie it to Valentine’s Day with various subplots about love, from the jaded assistant who falls for a poetry-writing goon to another hired thug who is trying to get his wife (who we never meet) back.
Poor Quan is the one who must do all the cringey voiceover, though he mostly comes out unscathed. As audiences saw in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” he’s great at switching believably between debonair fighter and tame nice guy, and he is undeniably compelling as a lead. He just needs a better movie around him.
DeBose, on the other hand, has only a barely-there character to play with. Rose Carlisle is a thinly drawn femme fatale in heels and leopard print coats with a penchant for laughing maniacally and drawing mustaches on Marvin’s real estate billboards. She was supposed to be dead after a deal gone wrong, but Marvin spared her because of love, I guess. Now she wants her life back, and, presumably, Marvin, though their chemistry might suggest otherwise. Basically, she needs to kill his crime lord brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu, whose defining character trait is sinisterly drinking boba) to be free. There’s a lot of talk about “hiding ain’t living” which sounds fine in theory but never quite syncs up – Marvin likes his new, non-violent life.
Like “John Wick,” “The Fall Guy” and other less memorable movies, “Love Hurts” is the latest in a string of films directed by guys who cut their teeth as stuntmen. This is a tale as old as cinema, but most recent efforts usually seem to have a common denominator in David Leitch, who has a producer credit on this one. Directing responsibilities on “Love Hurts” went to Jonathan Eusebio, who was a fight coordinator on “John Wick,” and perhaps needed a bit more help here — a better script, sharper editing that could help the comedic moments work better and a coherent vision.
Artificiality as an aesthetic is all fine and good, but “Love Hurts” feels a little too much like the charmless, ripped-from-the-Magnolia-showroom homes that Marvin is hawking to perky yuppies around Milwaukee. It may seem good enough in a Zillow photo or a movie trailer, a facsimile of what we think homes and films of a certain quality should look like. But spend a little time with the plastic-y sliding barn door, or the goon whose only zinger seems to be calling Rose the B-word, and you come to realize that it’s all hollow underneath — a “Truman Show” set without the real world behind it.
“Love Hurts,” a Universal Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong, bloody violence and language throughout.” Running time: 83 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
