Who doesn’t love Ke Huy Quan? The beloved Goonies and Indiana Jones actor had such an amazing comeback, winning an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, that we instantly want to root for him no matter what. He’s kept busy ever since, but he gets his first true starring role in Love Hurts, an action flick from the folks behind John Wick and Nobody. True to form, it’s a slickly-styled beat ’em up with a couple of cool fights, colorful villains, dangerous women, and a fun, flashy leading role. Despite that, what should be an awesome, entertaining action-comedy wastes Quan’s likeability and feels like a tired retread of similar movies made by this studio in particular.
You already know the deal, because it’s not too far from the plot of Nobody and, in some ways, John Wick. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a seemingly ordinary real estate agent with an over-the-top affable personality. He only wants to put you in the home of your dreams, y’know? Good guy. Somebody clearly doesn’t like him, though, because all of his billboards have been defaced. And his office manager Ashley (Lio Tipton) is a grump who Marvin tells to find the thing that she loves and go after it, advice that echoes throughout the film.
Marvin’s ordinary world gets turned upside down when he’s attacked in his office by the bladed, poetry-writing hitman The Raven (Mustafa Shakir), and is nearly gutted right there during the Valentine’s Day party. It turns out that someone from Marvin’s past, the beautiful and deadly Rose (Ariana DeBose), has returned and they think he knows where she’s at. She’s supposed to be dead, but now that she’s back, Marvin’s crime boss bro Knuckles (Daniel Wu) wants to put her back into the grave but not before finding out about some stolen money. It turns out that Marvin was once Knuckles’ brutal enforcer, but he always had a soft spot in his heart for Rose. Awww shucks.
At its best, Love Hurts captures the acrobatic energy of a Jackie Chan movie, with the ridiculous spotfests of a WWE tag team match. The prime example is an absolutely killer three-way-dance between Marvin and two hired goons, King and Otis, played by the hilarious Marshawn Lynch (awesome when in Beast Mode!!) and Andre Eriksen. Marvin, who is struggling to keep his dark side in check, gets thrown around like a rag doll and driven into the floor like a sack of potatoes and it’s awesome! The film fails to keep up the energy of this setpiece in future fights, no matter how hard ex-stunt coordinator-turned director Jonathan Eusebio tries.
It’s a simple plot for a lean 83-minute film, but even with such a short runtime Love Hurts finds many ways to screw up an easy thing. Quan and DeBose are a mismatched pair right from the start, the two having little chemistry either romantically or comedically. That shouldn’t be surprising given the age difference too vast to ignore. While you’re still on a high from the opening action sequences, the film bores you with a lot of Marvin’s hand-wringing as he weighs a return to his old life or staying with the new one he’s built. There’s a surprising amount of bad acting, too. I’m loathe to critique actors very often but when Marshawn Lynch is an acting highlight that’s cause for concern. Put Beast Mode in all of the movies. He’s far and away better than Cam Gigandet, who plays Knuckles’ flunky Renny Merlo, but we’re accustomed to Gigandet not being very good. And maybe we ought to prepare for the possibility that DeBose will never reach her West Side Story heights again. Maybe she went straight from Kraven the Hunter to Love Hurts because she’s trying on this idea of how a femme fatale should act and speak and it never works. Finally, a terrible, momentum-killing subplot involving Ashley and The Raven’s meeting cute is pretty tough to endure and it just keeps coming back.
Quan is having a blast, though, especially in the scenes shared with his Goonies brother, Sean Astin, who plays his boss, Cliff. Seeing these two together in a major studio movie again is just a nostalgic treat and it’s a shame it’s not in a better movie. On paper, this movie is right in my wheelhouse and my expectations were high for good reason. Love Hurts, but so does stinging disappointment.
