Love Hurts directed by Jonathan Eusebio is an action movie sprinkled with comedy. The film follows Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) who is a realtor in Wisconsin. Only, Gayble has a dark past that resurfaces after he receives a letter from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a girl he left for dead. The reappearance of Rose causes Gable to be hunted, chased, and threatened at the hand of his crime-boss brother Alvin Gable who is more formally known as Knuckles (Daniel Wu).
The film experiments in mixing many different elements to create a story about longing and confrontation with more silly elements to suspend the viewers disbelief and get a laugh or two out of the audience. Love Hurts is Eusebio’s first major film project with him working mainly on sets for stunts in the past, allotting him a more intimate perspective when it comes to the action features in this film.
The standouts for me in this film were the humor element. The movie had an overarching theme, that was very blunt, about staying true to yourself and owning up to your past mistakes. The movie used this in serious and funny scenes. A subplot of the movie that utilized this message was between Ash (Lio Tipton) and the Raven (Mustafa Shakir). Ash is Gayble’s assistant who hates her job while Raven is basically an assassin slash poet. Ash reads Raven’s poems and realizes that she needs to quit her job. The two have a romance that blossoms throughout the movie which is really entertaining for the viewer due to the pure juxtaposition of the two. Also, because the movie’s setting is on Valentines Day, there are a lot of jokes about relationship dynamics and love.
Another standout for the movie, were the intense action scenes. Because it is an action movie involving crime and hitmen, there are a lot of fight scenes. Eusebio’s experience in past films as a stunt coordinator makes these moments shine because they are so well thought out. The camera in these scenes will follow the motion of the fighting, zoning in on the physical altercations on screen. The characters will use household objects to add comedy and make the viewer shocked because they never would have thought to use something so random as a weapon. My favorite example of this is when Gable gets thrown into his fridge by the hit men sent by his brother in an attempt to take him out. Or when the same hitmen take these giant spoon and fork decorations off the wall at one of Gable’s houses he’s selling to try and fight with them. The use of random objects as weapons is a funny yet vital addition to these scenes. The fight scenes are probably the last thing I liked about this movie.
The movie, very focused on making sure the fight scenes were good, lacked in the plot and world building. While the audience knows that Gable used to be in his brother’s crime group, we don’t find out why he did it or what his purpose was in the group other than being a killer. The relationship between his brother is left underdeveloped which took away from any meaning in scenes involving the two of them. There are times where, as the audience, we are supposed to sympathize with the Gayble brothers, but it is hard to do that when we got little to no context as to why we should. Also, there were times when the movie would switch to voice overs explaining the characters thoughts and feelings. I feel the movie would have been better if it showed the audience these feelings. For example, the relationship that develops between Gable and Rose is told to us through a voice over. That relationship would have felt less artificial if they actually acted out their unrequited feelings rather than telling us through an inner monologue. Show us that there is something there by adding lingering looks, brave actions, or creating palpable tension, all things that were lacking in the film making the narrative less believable.
The pacing of the movie was weird too. Being a little over an hour, the movie goes back and forth between important plot points, fight scenes, and flashbacks. They accumulate to make the movie experience a little jarring. The beginning was confusing to follow, for the movie went straight from a happy go-lucky guy, to fighting and violence. A choice I’m sure was made for comedic reasons, but really didn’t make much sense. The flashbacks in the middle and end of the movie were necessary to understand the plot but connect back to the plot being inherently underdeveloped causing the flashbacks to be underdeveloped. Leaving the audience with more questions than if we didn’t get them. I think another twenty minutes or so could have connected some of those loose ends creating a more cohesive story while keeping all the elements it already had.
The movie had a lot of potential, but ultimately just ended up falling short for me. While having a lot of heavy themes, they were belittled by the focus on the action and fighting. Love Hurts is a good movie if you are looking for a quick watch on Valentine’s Day with some silly elements shown throughout, but it is nothing more than that. Overall, I would give it a 2.5 out of 5 stars.
