By George & Josh Bate
Few actors have had career trajectories as heartwarming and inspiring as Ke Huy Quan. The Vietnam-born American actor gained prominence as a child actor when he played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies but soon after took a nearly 20-year hiatus from acting due to troubles finding roles. Decades after pursuing work as a stunt choreographer and assistant director, Quan ventured back into acting, only to find greater acclaim than he had ever received before for his role in Everywhere All at Once, which he won an Academy Award for. Following roles in the popular Disney+ television series Loki and American Born Chinese, Ke Huy Quan’s Hollywood renaissance (Quanissance?) continues as the actor now headlines the new action comedy Love Hurts.
Hailing from producer David Leitch (The Fall Guy, Bullet Train) and stunt expert-turned-director Jonathan Eusebio, in his directorial debut, Love Hurts follows Ke Huy Quan as Marvin Gable, a successful realtor who is dragged back into former life as an assassin when an old love interest (played by Ariana DeBose) remerges.
An actor of Ke Huy Quan’s charm and history deserves a vehicle that showcases his capacity as a compelling leading man. Unfortunately, Love Hurts woefully misses the mark in this regard. The movie should really write itself. Quan has a background in stunt choreography, and yet he is also endlessly likable and endearing, which makes him the perfect actor to headline a Nobody-esque movie about a seemingly normal man dragged back into a life of assassins and crime. No, this film wouldn’t win any plaudits for originality considering the wealth of narratively similar movies, but impressive execution of a tried-and-tested plot can elevate even the most unoriginal films. In almost every regard, however, Love Hurts squanders what should be an easy win of a film.
For starters, Love Hurts struggles with unnecessarily jumbled plotting. Many films begin with important events having occurred beforehand offscreen, with the audience catching up on these events through dialogue, context, and inference throughout. A poorly unorganized script leads Love Hurts to have far too much of this though, to such an extent that it feels like you’ve missed the first 15 minutes or so of the movie once it has started. The plot isn’t complicated per se, but it is told so messily and features far too many moving parts for this kind of film. With many similar action comedies, simplicity in narrative often allows the audience to be more present for the action and humor on display, although, in Love Hurts, messy storytelling drags the entire film down.
As an action comedy, Love Hurts underwhelms with its humor, while delivering entertaining albeit unriveting action. Whether it be one liners or physical gags, the humor seldom lands, resulting in an action comedy devoid of genuine comedy. The action, meanwhile, is well choreographed and filmed, adopting a more comical and less realistic approach to combat. The fight sequences are more playful than realistic, with the camerawork feeding into visual gags of the action and unexpected objects from the environment incorporated in fights. The action is nothing you haven’t seen before, although there is a quality to the choreography and dynamism of directing that makes it engaging (as one would expect from director Jonathan Eusebio, who has served as the stunt coordinator on projects ranging from The Fall Guy to Obi-Wan Kenobi to Black Panther. That being said, after a couple of action sequences early on, the film goes a relatively lengthy stretch of its runtime without any combat before picks up with a more action-heavy final act (although, at this point, a more entertaining final act of decent action is far too little far too late to salvage the film). Devoid of clever jokes and plotting, this lengthy middle stretch of the movie proves to be frustratingly dull and boring, and makes the brief 83-minute film feel like it somehow overstays its welcome.
Arguably more damning than any other critique though is the film’s use (or, rather, misuse) of star Ke Huy Quan. There are few actors who are as immediately and intrinsically likable as Quan. His singular sense of humor, vocal expression, quirkiness, and charm make him such a compelling actor, not to mention his incredible dramatic range. While Love Hurts features plenty of Quan, it never really feels like it’s his film in the same way that Nobody was Bob Odenkirk’s or Taken was Liam Neeson’s. This isn’t just down to an overpopulated cast of supporting characters – it’s due to there being so few instances in which Quan is able to showcase his personality and range. Rare, fleeting sparks of Quan’s brilliant quirkiness are sprinkled throughout a film largely devoid of the charm that makes Quan so special. He deserves a far better movie for his Hollywood leading man debut.
Taking up a sizable amount of screentime, often at the expense of Quan, is Ariana DeBose. Playing Rose, an assassin and love interest of Quan’s Marvin Gable character, DeBose never quite works in Love Hurts, delivering a performance that would be better suited in a commercial than a feature film. She lacks any semblance of chemistry with Quan, which dampens any attempts to explore Valentine’s Day-related themes. Between Love Hurts and Kraven the Hunter, DeBose has recently been a far cry from the brilliance she is capable of, as seen in Spielberg’s West Side Story.
DeBose is just one of many examples of miscastings in Love Hurts, a film riddled with odd casting choices across the board. Rapper André Eriksen of the Norwegian rap group Warlocks, former NFL player Marshawn Lynch, New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby, and reality television personality and Property Brother Drew Scott are just some of the strange casting choices here, which, together, make for an unusual and ill-fitting ensemble (even with Lynch having a few bright moments in the movie). Meanwhile, Sean Astin is thrown in the mix as a Southern realtor whose inclusion feels mostly like a half-hearted attempt to win over viewers by having Quan and Astin reunite from their days working together on The Goonies. Daniel Wu (Into the Badlands, American Born Chinese) plays Knuckles, the boba tea-sipping crime lord brother of Quan’s character, as a thoroughly uninteresting and intimidating villain. In addition to making the film feel more off-putting and awkward than it is already is, these miscastings are further problematic as the actors feature heavily in the film and, in turn, deprive the audience of who they really want to see in the movie – Quan.
Quan and DeBose both narrate the film in what appears to be a patchwork attempt at ensuring the story makes some degree of sense. So much information and emotion is left to these dual inner monologues / narrations that it calls into question how much of this was initially scripted and how much was devised after-the-fact to recover the film somehow. Relatedly, an overuse of ADR creates a disorienting effect in which characters seemingly have entire conversations offscreen.
As an action comedy timed to release in the month of February, Love Hurts also attempts to be a Valentine’s Day movie, although it botches this ambition as well. Sparks are entirely absent in the central love story between Quan and DeBose’s characters, while a misguided side plot involving an unexpected romance between an assassin and a realtor’s assistant comes across as more silly than endearing. With Daniel Wu as the brother of Quan’s character and the main villain of the film, in addition to some found family dynamics between Astin and Quan’s characters, Love Hurts toys with the idea of brotherhood, which, in conception, is a clever idea considering this is a film about love and love can manifest in ways more than just romantic. Unfortunately, whether it be romantic love or brotherhood, Love Hurts leaves broken hearts in its wake.
VERDICT: 3/10
Love Hurts serves as a starring vehicle for Ke Huy Quan, one of the industry’s most likable and quirky actors, that falls short in almost every regard. Jumbled plotting, amplified by an overuse of ADR and dueling voiceovers, creates an unnecessarily difficult film to follow, one that makes you feel like you missed the first 15 minutes and can’t exactly catch up. The comedy in this action comedy also disappoints, while the light-hearted action is well-choreographed and dynamically shot, albeit conventional. Academy Award winner Ariana DeBose finds herself woefully miscast as the love interest of Quan’s character with a startling lack of chemistry with Quan. Meanwhile, a host of other strange casting choices creates an odd ensemble of characters and mismatched performances, although Marshawn Lynch has a few standout moments as a henchman. As a Valentine’s Day movie, Love Hurts also misses the mark, never succeeding as a love story and botching its attempts to explore the theme of brotherhood. Most egregious though is the film’s misuse of Quan, whose charm, quirkiness, likability, and dramatic range are largely absent (not due to Quan’s performance, but, rather, a poor script and disjointed directing). Quan deserves a great action movie (maybe even an entire franchise of his own) to lead, just like Keanu Reeves got with John Wick, Bob Odenkirk got with Nobody, and Liam Neeson got with Taken. This just isn’t it. Love is certainly not in the air with Love Hurts.