My son asked me what “Love Hurts” was about. I told him it was about how we can’t just move on from our past. “Oh,” he looked concerned, “That’s a bad movie.”
Unlike my son concluded, “Love Hurts” isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not a Christian one. The theme repeated over and over is that we cannot move on from the past until we conquer it. Our main character desperately works for redemption, but the film keeps telling him he can’t have it.
His aw-shucks charm in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” combined with the nostalgia for his 80s career has combined to make Ke Huy Quan Hollywood’s “it” man of the moment. And “Love Hurts” is the star vehicle to determine if he can top the marquee of a nationwide opening.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. The film is set over a Valentine’s Day weekend. Quan, plays Marvin Gable the regional realtor of the year. His upbeat attitude endears him to his clients and coworkers alike. Marvin used to be the enforcer for the local mob run by his brother. His brother ordered him to take out Rose, his unrequited crush, for stealing. But Marvin let her live and started a new life. Rose has decided to come back, delivering Valentine’s to the major players, dragging Marvin back into the life he tried to leave behind.
The film, which runs a brisk 85 minutes, is mostly a series of choreographed fight scenes interspersed with just enough exposition to explain the plot and three love stories. So it’s worth mentioning that the fight choreography is very focused on creating tableaus showing off the imagination of the designer. And this does work to create some eye-popping visuals.
But I’m not sure if the trade-off to get those moments was worth it. To get to the visual moments it wants to show off the fights vacillate wildly between grounded brutal realism and physics so implausible it would make the Avengers blush, with no real explanation or meaning between the two. The pacing of the fights was often awkward and halting. And I never felt any stakes in the scenes because I never knew how much risk my protagonists were in.
The film uses a series of intermittent voice-overs from both Marvin and Rose to explain their attraction to one another. But the chemistry between the two never takes off. And while the film explains why Rose would be attracted to Marvin’s kindness and power, we never figure out why Marvin was willing to throw his entire life away twice at an outside chance with a woman who isn’t that interested in him.
The two grunts in the film played by André Eriksen and Marshawn Lynch, spend the time between their fights figuring out how to write a text to repair one of their marriages. The most amusing romance is between Raven, who breaks into Marvin’s office to fight him, and Ashley, the real estate assistant who finds his unconscious body and falls in love with him while reading his poetry in his notebook before he wakes up.
The movie is surprisingly funny. It leans into the cliches of the Asian mob film, and then juxtaposes it next to a bunch of odd things: suburban model homes, an all-American black belt, a poet, a pull-over sweater. It’s mostly just the one joke, but it’s enough for the film’s brisk run.
My favorite part of the film was Sean Astin. Astin plays Marvin’s boss, and older brother figure who gave him the job when he escaped the mob. Astin and Quan famously shared the screen in “Goonies.” During the scene early in the film when Astin gives Quan the real estate award, you could feel the dialogue transcend the characters. It felt like Astin was so proud of the success of his old friend Quan, and this was his moment to tell him.
Quan, for his part, does everything right but doesn’t take the material to another level.
If you love fight choreography, there will certainly be some interesting things to look at here. And if you want a classic action romp with a few laughs and a Valentine’s twist this might be the film for you. But for most people, I don’t think it all comes together. It’s too gory without meaning. And while the movie seems to think it has a happy ending, I can’t imagine that most of the people watching will agree. It’s got R-rated content with no compensating uplift to make it worth the experience.
Two out of five stars. “Love Hurts” opens nationwide on February 7, 2025.
