Does Love Hurts Even Count As a Movie?

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Love Hurts strives to breathe life into the tired and uninteresting retired-killer-returns subgenre by infusing it with romance, but falls short. The film also aims to capitalize on Hollywood’s current preference for action movies featuring ordinary men pushed past their limits, as evidenced by casting Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan in a leading role after his successful performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once. However, the disappointing aspect isn’t that the movie fails to achieve any of these goals. Instead, it’s disheartening that by the time the credits roll, it seems as though the film didn’t even make an effort.

Quan, who has a charming yet ordinary demeanor that suits everyday characters well, portrays Marvin Gable, a genial Milwaukee realtor unwillingly drawn back into the violent gang lifestyle he believed he had left behind. The unexpected return of a large group of thugs in his life is Rose (Ariana DeBose, another Academy Award winner), an ex-mob lawyer who previously worked for Marvin’s brother, Alvin, also known as Knuckles (Daniel Wu). Rose had deceived Knuckles and was believed to be dead; however, Marvin didn’t kill her because he harbored secret feelings for her. Now, she’s resurfaced, prompting Knuckles’s men to pursue both Rose and Marvin.

remarkably, despite their undeniable skills, Quan and DeBose are given roles that lack substance – they hardly get anything meaningful to perform or speak. He repeats empty clichés about his fresh start, while she manages a few lines about confronting the past. These brief character arcs can’t sustain a full-length movie. And indeed, they don’t: Clocking in at 83 minutes (with credits), Love Hurts seems to have once been more than it is now – a collection of fight scenes with barely enough narrative thread to hold them together.

It’s unfortunate if the action was inventive or engaging, it could have made this a fantastic film. However, the fights are rather routine: skulls collide, weapons are thrown, and bodies are tossed with mechanical consistency. Even an unusual scene where someone is shoved into a refrigerator and flung around lacks excitement. Director Jonathan Eusebio, known for his work on shows like The Fall Guy, Violent Night, and several John Wick films, fails to infuse the action with spontaneity, elegance, or intense energy. A fight involving a pair of large fork and knife wall decorations makes us hopeful for something entertaining, but it only lasts about 20 seconds. If you can’t make a movie interesting when it’s primarily about fights, is it really a movie at all?

In this film review from a personal perspective, I’d say: The script occasionally tries to inject some quirky elements, such as the unexpected romance between Marvin’s gloomy assistant, Ashley (Lio Tipton), and Raven (Mustafa Shakir), an imposing, poetic assassin. It’s Valentine’s Day, after all, so emotions run high. However, these scenes seem to have been borrowed from a more daring production – one that successfully combined the charm of a rom-com with the intensity of a high-casualty hitman saga. Unfortunately, in this case, these segments feel disconnected and aimlessly float above the main storyline. It’s unclear whether they were poorly thought out or remnants of a film that had its core stripped away. Regardless, I’m not convinced that I’d be eager to discover the backstory behind this seemingly misplaced romance.

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2025-02-07 19:55