LOVE HURTS -- But Not as Much as Watching This Embarrassment

Review by Daniel Lima

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A couple years ago, I made the mistake of eating a cup of yogurt that had gone bad. For days I was bedridden, soaking my bed sheets in sweat as I rolled around in feverish delirium. The nauseating smell of my own sick filled my bedroom, and it took everything I had to make it to the toilet before adding to that stench. The lack of sleep wore me down, every single moment felt like an eternity, and it seemed like I would never again feel normal. It was the worst physical sensation I have ever experienced. Watching Love Hurts is a solid runner-up.

Ke Huy Quan stars as a hitman-turned-realtor who has left his criminal past in order to reinvent himself. When a former flame shows up out of the blue, everything that he’s built for himself is threatened, and so he is forced to call upon his particular set of skills one more time.

The “retired killer forced to take up arms” movie is practically a genre unto itself. Though these films all treat their premise with varying degrees of seriousness, they all treat their protagonist’s relationship with the life they’ve left behind with sincerity. Keanu Reeves in John Wick was happy to leave the underworld behind, and wreaks vengeance on those who refuse to leave him in peace. Bob Odenkirk in Nobody had grown to resent his placid suburban life, and craved to unleash his inner beast. Liam Neeson in Taken was a devoted family man, but had no qualms embracing that violent part of himself if it meant preserving what he had. In each case, the use of violence and how it disrupts the former killer’s retirement and sense of self serves as the emotional foundation of everything that follows.

Love Hurts pump fakes building that foundation. It establishes that Quan loves his new life, and at first it seems that this will conflict with the romantic attachment he has with Ariana DeBose, who needs the help of his former self. Indeed, love and romance are constantly gestured towards through the movie, from a henchman going through a martial spat, to burgeoning love between Quan’s subordinate and an assassin, to the strained familial love between him and his brother. Hell, the movie takes place on Valentine’s Day.

Where a decent film would drive home the aberrant nature of the ensuing violence, however, no time is spent here grounding the narrative in anything real. The first scene is a montage of Quan being cheery and vivacious with his co-workers, and the next is a fight scene with a knife-wielding hitman. With no time given to setting up his current world before launching the character back into his old one, it is impossible to feel any sense of loss; his motivations might make sense on paper, but they don’t read as genuine.

To make matters worse, the film maintains a cartoonish, over-the-top, cloyingly self-aware tone to every scene, whether a bloody brawl, banter between thugs, or straight up torture. People do not talk to each other in natural ways, people do not react to the world around them in natural ways. Why would an employee, upon seeing an unconscious man in her boss’ office, start reading poetry? Why would a man in the middle of a torture session invite regular civilians into the house where he’s conducting the torture? This is a story about a man who wants everything to go back to normal, but with moments like this constantly cropping up, it’s impossible to get a sense of what exactly is “normal” by the movie’s own logic. ​

This irreverence is a common thread through 87North productions such as this, and particularly through the work of producer David Leitch. It is typically incredibly irritating and suffocates all pathos with a story, and given the utter lack of any dramatic runway here, that is even more potently felt. There is a distinct lack of stakes through the entire movie, and it didn’t take long for me to ask myself, “Why should I care about any of this?”

It should go without saying that the theme of love is utterly incoherent. Not only are these characters one-note sketches whose personalities could be described in a couple words, the performers all turn in career-worst performances. Thankfully I’ve seen Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, and Marshawn Lynch do good work, because otherwise I’d assume they are simply incapable of acting (Sean Astin does okay, and Daniel Wu… is as good as ever). No surprise then that there no spark of chemistry between any two people in the movie, least of all Quan and DeBose, the romantic leads whose undying love for each other is supposed to be the catalyst of the plot. To say nothing of the fact that their twenty year age gap begs the question of how long ago did he break away from crime, it is impossible to discern why they even like each other, let alone love.

To be fair to the actors, they have little to work with. The film opens with two actions scenes, ends with two action scenes, and treads water for the entire middle section. Characters go from one room to another, constantly spout meaningless exposition and backstory, constantly restate what their supposed goals and desires are. The villains spend most of the film looking for the heroes, until a complete contrivance bring them all together. The main antagonist is only ever shown in two locations, and has no direct effect on the plot. So little happens in this movie, there is so much dead air and repetitive dialogue and so little narrative momentum, I began to suspect that ChatGPT may deserve a co-writing credit.

Of course, at the end of the day, this is an action-comedy. All this could possibly be brushed aside if this was a silly, goofy movie that earned some laughs and some cheers.

Well.

Comedy can be hard to critique in a meaningful way. All art is subjective, but with a joke, you either think it’s funny or you don’t. To the credit of Love Hurts, there was plenty of laughter at my screening. Plenty of people tittered at the juvenile, asinine, hacky, derivative, lazy, smug, self-satisfied humor that pervades the film, a style common through everything that has David Leitch’s name on it. I imagine that if I had seen this movie fifteen years ago, this movie would have made me laugh uproariously if I caught the edited-for-cable version on SpikeTV. Today, as a grown man, it made me feel genuinely embarrassed for the people whose names were attached to the script. Perhaps they should have given ChatGPT the credit just to save face. That said, if you find things curse words, or a man in a suit drinking boba tea, or a Totally Random Non-Sequitur, this might bring the house down.  

The most confounding, aggravating part of the movie, however, is how poor the action is. As low an opinion as I have of Leitch’s output, his stuntman roots are apparent in everything he produces, and a large part of the 87North brand is delivering quality set pieces. This film in particular is the directorial debut of company man Johnathan Eusebio, a seasoned stunt coordinator and action designer whose credits are unimpeachable. In fairness, the actual choreography is decent enough: the fighters use the environment in dynamic and reactive ways, there’s plenty of fun wire-assisted throws and falls to maximize impact, and there’s one interesting shot that is fairly novel.

The issues are multifaceted. On the one hand, Eusebio suffers from his own success. The actor-driven style of action design that 87eleven (the team that developed into 87North Productions) pioneered, in which the cinematography is legible and clearly shows to the audience that the actors playing these characters are actually performing a good amount of the choreography, was a welcome antidote to the fast editing and shakycam that pervaded Hollywood through the ‘00s. These days, however, that style can be found in everything from the biggest blockbusters to cheap DTV thrillers, and this film doesn’t introduce anything new in the way the John Wick sequels do.

Furthermore, that proliferation has started to expose the flaws of this style, particularly in our contemporary filmmaking climate. Allowing your actors to go through the movements themselves can make for beautiful art… when your stars are Donnie Yen, or Scott Adkins, or Jackie Chan, or Cynthia Rothrock, particularly when they were all in their twenties. Here, the cast includes a lot of older men, and actors who aren’t known as martial artists or stunt performers. Obviously, it’s possible to build something interesting within those limitations, as Martial Club did when designing fight scenes in Everything Everywhere All at Once with Ke Huy Quan himself. It is hard to watch this, however, and not consider that the crew butted up against that ceiling.

Or rather, they would have, if the action weren’t compromised in ways that are incredibly disappointing to see from a film directed by a stunt professional. Each fight constantly cuts away from the action, usually for some comedic beat, but sometimes just to establish that yes, someone else is witnessing the action, or is leaving to another room. This breaks up the rhythm of the set piece in a way that is incredibly jarring and serves no larger purpose. I suspect that this is either Eusebio didn’t trust the audience to be patient with not having that information, or that this was a rough edit and we’re seeing the best possible version (a possibility made more likely by all the obvious ADR). There’s also the fact that there is so little action — only at the beginning and end of the film — and it all goes down in drab model homes and offices. Some visual diversity would have been a welcome addition, perhaps create opportunities that would allow the fight scenes to stick out.

Love Hurts is a truly abysmal film. It is only eighty-three minutes including credits, yet it feels a thousand times that long. There is next to nothing to commend here, nothing for anyone to take pride in. The kindest thing I can say about it is given the choice between giving this a second viewing, and eating some room temperature dairy product, I would not immediately grab a spoon. I would, however, do just about anything else.

Love Hurts escapes into theaters February 7.

Rating: 0.5/5