Director: Jonathan Eusebio
Cast: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Marshawn Lynch, Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Rhys Darby, Andre Ericksen, Sean Astin
Screenplay: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, Luke Passmore
83 mins. Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language throughout.

When you win an Oscar, a lot of new doors open for you. For Tom Hanks, he followed up his win for Philadelphia by going right back in with Forrest Gump. For Mahershala Ali, he won two Oscars and then rang Kevin Feige to join the MCU (MCU film pending). Ke Huy Quan followed up an awards run for Everything Everywhere All at Once by teaming up with 87North Productions for an action comedy, one that showcases all the joy and action that the actor has been giving his entire career. Love Hurts is a good time at the movies that has enough charm and energy to make up for some of its narrative misgivings.

Marvin Gable (Quan) is living the sensible life. He’s a successful realtor with a great relationship with his staff and a striving to help people. But that life hides a lie. When Rose (Ariana DeBose, West Side Story), a woman from his past, resurfaces, Marvin’s old life comes with it, including his criminal brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu, Warcraft), who is wondering how Rose is still alive after tasking Marvin with killing her. As the nefarious people in Knuckles’s employ come looking for Marvin and Rose, he’s forced to question if this new life is the one for him after all.

It’s very obvious from the beginning of Love Hurts that it has a first-time director at the helm. Jonathan Eusebio, who has been a very busy stuntman for years, has his first feature on display here, and it’s a bit messy throughout. While Eusebio captures some really great action, he’s unable to use that action to create visual narrative. Oftentimes, there’s a lot of noise in what’s happening, but he’s missing the impact of it. We’re either given too little information and have to infer the goings-on, or we’re given too much unnecessary information presented by characters telling the audience instead of showing through the actions of the characters.

Quan is excellent here, and he’s doing a lot of heavy lifting for the sparse screenplay. It’s actually quite admirable how much emotion he’s able to mine from the story, he’s a load of fun onscreen, and I hope we get to see more of him in leading roles in the future. I think he deserves better than what he’s been given here, as does Ariana DeBose, who is mostly serving as plot in the film. She doesn’t have much to do in the film, including the action, where she’s mostly absent. I think someone with the physicality that we’ve seen on display from her that she deserves to have had more to do in this movie. Thankfully, she has chemistry with Quan, and she’s charismatic enough to get away with it.

While not executed terribly well, I appreciated the branching structure of the narrative with regards to relationship and love within the confines of the Valentine’s Day story. As new characters, like Roger “The Raven” (Mustafa Shakir, Shaft), a poetic hitman, and the duo of King (Marshawn King, Bottoms) and Otis (Andre Ericksen, Violent Night) trying to save Otis’s marriage, there are multiple branching narratives, all concerned with love, and all within the confines of this action film.

Love Hurts is not a well-made action picture, but it is an enjoyable movie experience. It’s occasionally mean-spirited, it rushes the thin story and misses out on a lot of character development and catharsis. At the same time, it’s funny and action-packed, and both Quan and Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings) were able to imbue their limited time with emotion. I’m even fairly certain that an early action scene makes use of a refrigerator and a set of cookie cutters to reference Quan’s past connections to Indiana Jones and X-Men, respectively. It’s also the second Valentine’s Day genre movie from this year to use a straw as a weapon. While there are better movies to see on Valentine’s Day weekend (Companion and/or Heart Eyes), Love Hurts is a goofy and fun enough time regardless of its many faults.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe