What hurts more… Love? Or watching this movie?
Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose deserve better. The two Supporting Actor Oscar winners, for Everything Everywhere All At Once and West Side Story, respectively, can tackle dramatic and comedic material while holding an audience’s most focused attention. When used right, Quan and DeBose can elevate a film from good to great. Unfortunately, Love Hurts isn’t good. Instead, Love Hurts results from an inexperienced filmmaker who doesn’t understand how to utilize the valuable toys he has to play with. The film is excruciatingly overwritten and poorly edited, with Quan’s inherent charm as its sole saving grace.
It’s been reported that Steven Spielberg convinced Quan to take the role of Marvin Gable, a realtor with a violent past who reluctantly gets pulled back into action when his former quasi-colleague-quasi-flame, Rose Carlisle (Ariana DeBose), reappears after being presumed dead. Even if the finished product doesn’t work, Spielberg was right. Love Hurts serves as an audition tape in which Quan proves he can handle a leading role, juggling tightly choreographed action, silly comedy, and even a few bad-ass moments (someone, please hire Quan as the villain of your story!). Love Hurts should garner Quan more interest, and better projects, thus further prolonging his unlikely comeback.
Love Hurts director Jonathan Eusebio (The Fall Guy; Black Panther) has extensive experience providing stunt and fight coordination for Marvel tent-poles and many other action blockbusters. However, he’s never directed a film. Eusebio’s lack of directorial experience is on full display, as is the poorly written script by three writers. Aside from Gable’s return to a violent life that he thought was over, Love Hurts extends its story to include at least five silly side plots, all minimally explored. The filmmakers also slap bits of inner dialogue voice-over across many scenes, demonstrating little faith in their ability to tell their story visually and/or coherently. Every editing choice feels like an obvious, last-minute addition.
The poor editing would be forgivable if Love Hurts maintained a consistent tone. The movie is uniformly silly, but only in a few scenes does it feel intentionally so. In one moment a fight sequence is slapstick and energetic, and in the next, a brutal murder takes place, only to be followed by a tender scene between Marvin and Rose. This unbalanced dance of tonalities continues from fifteen minutes into the film until the end. I’d recommend watching the first fifteen minutes and then turning it off. By doing so, you’ll get a few laughs, a solid feel for Quan’s charm, and the unruined appearances of former Seattle Seahawks star Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch as a hitman and a 40-year reunion between Quan and his Goonies and Encino Man co-star, Sean Astin.
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Love Hurts opens in theaters on Friday, February 7th.
