Love Hurts, directed by Jonathan Eusebio, is the next film in a recently popularized genre of holiday action films. With movies like Violent Night as its predecessor, Love Hurts attempts to mix its well-choreographed fight scenes with a plot that combines both Valentine’s Day and a martial arts bounty hunter revenge story. If that sounds heavily mismatched to you, that’s because it is, and frankly, this movie doesn’t do anything further to help make the story, tone, or setting work.
As we enter an era of film where creativity is at its peak, with new interesting takes, concepts, and executions constantly finding their way onto the big screen, it has become all the more apparent when a movie lacks any heart or real creativity. Unfortunately, Love Hurts was one of those movies. It follows an ex-assassin named Marvin Gable, played by Ke Huy Quan, as his old flame returns and causes trouble, digging up the demons from his past. And of course, he must fight all these people from his past to get his life back and get the girl. This film places a lot of emphasis on the love that Gable feels for the character Rose and attempts to make it the beating heart of the movie. That being said, they never really show this. Rather than showing us the chemistry between them, their history, or any real love they share, they just tell the audience that he loves her and then move on. Instead, they focus more on a budding romance between two side characters, which has no real importance to the movie, other than being played for laughs.
The performances in this movie aren’t necessarily bad. In fact, I quite liked Ke Huy Quan and the energy he brought to his role. But as an actor, there’s only so much you can do with a bad script, and this movie did not give him a lot to work with. The same thing goes for Ariana Debose as Rose. She’s an Academy Award-winning actress, and we know she has the chops, but in this, she has no moments of sincerity to show off her acting. It’s clear when they were writing her character, they wanted her to have a mysterious, dangerous, slightly crazy vibe to her. But, because this is the only side of her they show us, she comes across as a very one-dimensional character and leaves the audience confused about what Gable even sees in her.
The only real positive about this movie was the action. Being directed by a stuntman and with Ke Huy Quan as the leading man, this movie was destined to have some good action. Every fight scene was unique, energetic, funny, and all-around very cool to watch. It was in these moments that the movie shined, and I wish that there were more throughout the film. When you have an action movie like this that is lacking in all the parts aside from the action, the majority of the watch time will be spent just waiting for the next fight scene. That’s what a majority of this movie felt like, a bunch of filler to contextualize a handful of cool fight scenes.
In the end, this movie was a disappointment for me. As a fan of Ke Huy Quan and action comedies, I know this movie had the potential to have been much better if only more care had been put into the writing stage. I’m going to give it a 1.5 out of 5 stars, simply because of the well-done action and the clear effort Quan put into trying to salvage this film. If you’re looking for something to watch this Valentine’s Day, I would recommend choosing something else instead.
