In a different, far better timeline, actor Ke Huy Quan would have a CV packed with a mix of lead and supporting roles stretching back several decades. Instead, Quan’s acting career languished after appearing in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies. Quan stayed in the industry, working as a stunt choreographer until Everything Everywhere All at Once two years ago. An Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor later, and Quan found himself in demand in front of the camera again (e.g., Loki S2, American Born Chinese).
Unfortunately, Love Hurts, his first lead role since he won the Oscar in 2023, won’t do him — or the audience — any favours. Part rom-com, part action-comedy, Love Hurts fails more often than it succeeds, often in the same scene or even the same shot. It’s certainly not due to Quan’s performance or his dedication. He’s an assured, able-footed performer who can handle light comedy one moment and the rigorous demands of onscreen action the next. But Quan, like everyone else involved with Love Hurts, can only elevate, not levitate, a woefully underdeveloped screenplay credited to not one, not two, but three separate writers: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore.
When we first meet Quan’s milquetoast character, Marvin Gable, a genial sort in love with his life as a realtor to upper-class buyers eager and willing to buy the latest in overpriced, suburban conformity. He’s the top seller at Frontier Realty and has a newly minted award, courtesy of boss-friend Cliff Cussick (Goonies co-star Sean Astin). The accolade proves he’s not only made the correct, law-abiding life choices, but he’s really good at what he does for a living and who he’s blandly become: a well-compensated cog in the capitalist American Dream.
Except, of course, Marvin isn’t who he says he is. Or rather isn’t who he used to be: A relentless, conscienceless hitman for his brother, Alvin “Knuckles” Gable (Daniel Wu), a notorious gangster with a small army of sycophants, cutthroats, and accountants at his beck-and-call. They include Renny Merlo (Cam Gigandet), his right-hand henchman, King (Marshawn Lynch), one-half of a clean-up crew, and Otis (André Eriksen), the other half of said clean-up crew. Presumably no relation or connection to the Sonic the Hedgehog character, Knuckles also has a Brit-accented bookkeeper, Kippy Betts (Rhys Darby), who’ll play a key role somewhere down the narrative line.
Marvin’s idyllic life goes sideways when his not-quite-ex/love-of-his-unnatural-life, Rose Carlisle (fellow Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, once again underused in an undemanding role), returns from the dead. Her supposed death was punishment for embezzling funds from Knuckles and his Russian co-conspirators. Knuckles left that task to Marvin and Marvin, in turn, gave Rose a second chance at a life outside the mob. Now, though, she’s back and sending out Valentine’s Day cards to everyone in Knuckles’s crew, up to and including Marvin. Not surprisingly, Marvin wants no part of Rose or her plans for payback, right up until Knuckles, freshly aware of his brother’s betrayal, sends his oversized, overly verbose goons to uncover Rose’s whereabouts from the retired Marvin, regardless of the cost to Marvin’s ego, body, or reputation, and to stop Rose before she creates chaos and/or wreaks havoc.
Chaos and not havoc, though, happens to be Rose’s middle name and she indeed does create it wherever she goes. She also finds time to inject a little havoc into Marvin’s orderly, settled life. Between Marvin confronting an outsized stone-cold killer-poet, Raven (Mustafa Shakir), in his private office while a holiday party unfolds outside his door, and Marvin finding King and Otis waiting for him at home, it’s one extended action set piece after another. These sequences give Quan several opportunities to get his Jackie Chan on and leverage every available object, household surface, and body part to his advantage.
While first-time director Jonathan Eusebio, making the leap from stunt coordinator to helmer, handles the set pieces reasonably well, keeping the camera well-trained cleanly and clearly on the action as it unfolds, he’s far less sure-footed with the undercooked, groan-inducing dialogue scenes (almost all desperately in need of multiple polishes), inexplicable character motivations, and under-motivated plot turns. Collectively, they point in one and only one direction, failure, but they’re almost saved (operative word being “almost”) by Quan’s goodwill-generating performance and a mostly game, if sporadically misused, cast.
Ultimately, it’s a shame Quan’s first, post-Oscar lead role in more than three decades should prove equal parts underwhelming and disappointing, a misfire by any other name. Quan certainly deserved better. Then again, the audience on the other side of the screen deserved better too.
Love Hurts opens theatrically on Friday, February 7.
