LOVE HURTS (2025)

Ke Huy Quan is best known for his quirky and sweet child-acting, playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Data in The Goonies (1985). After two decades spent behind-the-scenes, before an epic comeback (and Academy Award-winning performance) as Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Quan now headlines the R-rated action-comedy Love Hurts.

Marvin Gable (Quan) is a former hitman turned cookie-making realtor who’s passionate about finding “a home for you”. He’s worked hard to build this life for himself and is beloved by his clients and colleagues, including his boss and mentor Cliff (Sean Astin). But his past life comes back to haunt him in the form of a Valentine’s card sent by Rose Carlisle (Ariana DeBose), an old mob member who was believed to be dead. She’s seeking revenge, and sending cutesy cards full of ominous and mysterious messages.

The mob boss, Alvin “Knuckles” (Daniel Wu), who’s also Marvin’s brother, isn’t too happy with Rose’s reappearance. He’d tasked Marvin to kill her after she stole his money; on his end, Marvin used the opportunity to save Rose, whom he’s in love with, and fake her death. Her revenge plot is threatening to destroy his shiny new life, to which he’s clinging with more passion than any feelings he’s supposed to have towards Rose. She’s trying to convince him she has a plan, and often repeats her catchphrase: ‘Hiding ain’t living’. In the background, goons are hunting Marvin and Rose down: the poetry-writing Raven (Mustafa Shakir), sent by Knuckles, and Otis (André Eriksen) and King (Marshawn Lynch), sent by Knuckles’ right-hand man Renny Merlo (Cam Gigandet). On the realtor side, burnt-out assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) is there to provide some banter in the face of Marvin’s unfailing positivity.

The Valentine’s theme martial arts caper is produced by David Leitch (Nobody) and made by first-time director Jonathan Eusebio, both former stunt performers and coordinators. If there’s an aspect Love Hurts certainly delivers on, it’s the fight scenes, which are numerous and well-executed. What they deliver in flashy choreography, however, lacks in soul. The sets are expansive but empty, and while they try to incorporate everyday items in the fights, à la Jackie Chan, it doesn’t have the impact they are hoping for. Nothing is surprising about cutlery being turned into weapons in a staged McMansion, and although some boba straws are working overtime, they’re not exactly what I would consider exciting. Ultimately, it’s mostly Marvin being tossed around a lot before eventually outsmarting the big, dumb bad guys, and not in the exciting way Everything had done with the fanny-pack-wielding Waymond. 

When they’re not fighting for their lives, Marvin and Rose are busy providing narration to explain what’s going on rather than show it. Instead of having the characters communicate and provide solid dialogue, the movie is content simply over-explaining everything. It doesn’t help that Quan and DeBose seriously lack chemistry as a duo, making their supposed love not only hard to believe but hard to even catch on to—that is, until they state it in the aforementioned narration. Love Hurts thankfully has other avenues for romance: Ashley and the Raven develop a surprisingly convincing connection after Marvin leaves him for dead in his frosted-glass office. Meanwhile, Otis is getting some support from King as he attempts to patch things up with his wife who’s just kicked him out, creating a forced bromance dynamic. 

Unfortunately, Quan doesn’t sell his John Wick-esque character as the supposedly dangerous killer his brother affectionately refers to as his “monster”. He’s unable to connect the dots between his sunny, all-smiles realtor persona and his slicked-hair, moustache-wearing hitman past. Quan has a naturally sweet disposition, which served him well in Everything Everywhere All at Once and in his turn as the quirky mechanic Orouboros in the second season of Loki, and the role as Marvin Gable is stretching his acting capabilities in a direction that is seemingly out of reach. The juxtaposition of the character’s very different personas isn’t as funny as the writers seem to think, either, and it loses steam pretty quickly. Equally unfortunate is Ariana DeBose’s turn as the arch, campy Rose. The fellow Oscar-winner seems to be operating in a completely different movie, giving more of a Quentin Tarantino-coded performance. 

Daniel Wu (Reminiscence) and Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) extract fun performances from their secondary roles. The latter reunited with his Goonies co-star 40 years later, is endearing as the Stetson-wearing, tender-hearted mentor Cliff. Astin has the easy charm of the everyman, who can strike up a conversation with anybody and make the most of any situation, and I would’ve loved to see more of Cliff and Marvin’s relationship play out. Wu infuses a comic streak into his frazzled mob boss character. It’s hard to take him seriously, with his silly moniker and his boba-drinking habit; where another don might have been chain-smoking or snorting cocaine, Knuckles slurps on boba like his life depends on it. Again, the movie would’ve benefited from more of Knuckles’ and Marvin’s relationship being shown, as their relationship is barely explored. It could’ve informed Marvin’s development, and his decision to quit, adding much-needed complexity to his character.

Love Hurts is tonally all over the place. It can’t decide if it wants to be a quirky tongue-in-cheek comedy or a gory, violent action movie. It toes the line but ultimately fails to unite the two, making it feel disjointed. No amount of candy hearts and bloody Band-Aids (both used liberally in the title cards) will help patch these tones together. It alternates between beige- and white-walled modern houses and neon-lit underbelly locations with little regard for the locations; they’re an afterthought, a missed opportunity to create compelling settings for the fighting scene. Eusebio has some interesting ideas for immersive shots, following the fights from the inside of a functioning microwave and the top shelf of the fridge, but he quickly abandons them; they’re gimmicky and disconnected from the rest of the movie rather than being a stylistic choice.

Is Love Hurts all one hopes for in a Valentine’s action comedy? Hardly, but it’ll make for an easy movie night once it hits streaming platforms. Is Quan leading-man material, or even this decade’s Jackie Chan? With better screenplays, he could be: he has the charm and the (karate) chops it takes, but he’s much too adorable to be anything like Keanu Reeves’ John Wick. His turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once was a more convincing performance than Love Hurts’ Marvin. Let’s hope he gets another stab at it (pun intended).

USA | 2025 | 83 MINUTES | 2.00:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Jonathan Eusebio.
writers: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard & Luke Passmore.
starring: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Marshawn Lynch, Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Rhys Darby, André Eriksen & Sean Astin.