The Snapshot: By trying to be an action movie, romance movie and comedy movie all at once, Love Hurts fails at being any of them.
Love Hurts
3 out of 10
14A, 1hr 23mins. Action Romance Comedy.
Directed by Jonathan Eusebio.
Starring Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Lio Tipton, Cam Gigandet and Sean Astin.
Believe me, dissuading couples from seeing Love Hurts is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.
Despite having so many great components, the total marriage of the varied cast, script and a story with empty promises makes Love Hurts a Valentine’s Day mess. The film is a overly violent and underdeveloped disappointment.
The story is of a former assassin turned innocent realtor (Ke Huy Quan, best known for the Oscar-winning Everything, Everywhere All At Once) being dragged back into his criminal life by an ex-girlfriend (Ariana DeBose), only for a set of rival thugs to come and hunt them both down.
Former stuntman Jonathan Eusebio makes his debut as a film director, and while his skill for fight choreography is evident, he can’t make sense of the film’s weak screenplay and countless loose ends.
Not only is the movie a comedy with unfunny jokes, it’s also a romance with shallow relationships and thin chemistry between most of the pairings. Only the action elements sometimes succeed with some impressive fights and stunts — but the camera is so shaky and distracting it’s hard to enjoy them.
Worst of all is the film’s atrocious script. There are multiple narrators with clashing tones, there are several side characters who appear with context or explanation, and the repetitive exposition is dull and pointless.
Throughout the story, there’s a recurring theme that “hiding ain’t living,” in that the source of love is being true to oneself and going after what it is we really want. But that theme, highlighted in so much of the marketing and early story, is left at surface level by only being repeatedly mentioned out loud instead of explored in any way.
Quan and DeBose (both Academy Award winners!) are both earnest, likeable actors who deserves better than this for a star vehicle. While I enjoyed him and Lio Tipton as his assistant Ashley, many other performers fell flat.
Many of the rival assassins and killers are forgettable, each with thin, unneeded subplots that often get abandoned. Daniel Wu as master villain Knuckles is also barely in the film, but the most surprising letdown is DeBose’s work (normally great) as Rose, which is campy and hokey instead.
With such a great cast and unique concept, Love Hurts should’ve been a home run for Valentines Day. Instead, the film leaves you feeling empty and disappointed like being dumped by your ex-partner.
