Love Hurts

r96sk

February 7, 2025

8/10

<em>'Love Hurts'</em> is one I highly enjoyed, thanks to thoroughly entertaining action, a good cast and a nicely paced 83 minute run time. There are things that can be classed as issues, for example the internal monologues are iffy and it's perhaps a tad over sentimental in parts. Those aforementioned things aren't a big deal for me though, like at all. I'd recommend this and would happily revisit it, I'd imagine the rewatchability is pretty high. The pure action is great to watch, there is …

Sadly, Love Hurts is Ke Huy Quan’s first film as a leading man after winning an Academy Award for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Quan’s acting career was sparse for nearly 40 years, but trained in martial arts his entire life and worked with Corey Yuen (martial arts choreographer for The Man with the Iron Fists, director of The Transporter) as a fight coordinator on X-Men and a stunt choreographer on Jet Li’s The One. Quan is the highlight of Love Hurts. He’s likable and conflicted as Mar…

CinemaSerf

February 13, 2025

5/10

“Marv” (Ke Huy Quan) is a cheery real estate agent who’s just won an award for his sterling efforts when he receives an unwelcome visitor at his office. “The Raven” (Mustafa Shakir) is a poet, he loves his verse - but he’s also an useful man with his knives too, and after a few minutes we begin to suspect that this meek little estate agent has really got all the ninja skills of “John Wick”. It transpires that he used to be an enforcer for his sibling “Knuckles” (Daniel Wu) who has been mixed up …

This movie starts off like a comedy, which is fine if that’s what it’s aiming for, but when you go in expecting action and get slapstick humor instead, it feels off. The tone is all over the place. The story follows Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan), a former hitman turned real estate agent, but it doesn’t do much with that concept. It throws him into a situation where his past comes back to haunt him, yet there’s no proper setup, no real stakes, and no explanation for why things happen the way they do…

Despite the undeniable talent of Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose, LOVE HURTS is a painfully generic action-comedy that does little to justify its rather short presence. While both actors bring their usual charisma and commitment, both are left stranded in a film that lacks creativity, effective humor, and even a basic sense of narrative cohesion. The occasional well-executed fight sequence provides fleeting moments of excitement, but they aren't nearly enough to compensate for the bland storytelli…