Ke Huy Quan is up to the task as a credible action star - he comes on screen like gangbusters with complete assuredness. Just watch him in "Everything Everywhere All At Once" and you see the dramatic, comic, romantic qualities are all there (so much so that he won an Oscar for it). The days of the tyke from "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "The Goonies" are gone as he is now a formidable grown-up action star. Now if he only picked better movies than this sad waste of his talents, "Love Hurts." This Love lands with a thud and it made my sides hurt.
Ke Huy Quan plays a successful realtor, Marvin Gable, who is about to have a hectic day at work. It is Valentine's Day and as soon as he enters his office after passing out heart-shaped cookies, he is whacked on the head. A killer named Raven (Mustafa Shakir), appearing as some purple-coated supervillain from Hell who reads poetic verses, starts beating Marvin and thrusts a knife through his hand! What gives? Marvin was formerly an assassin working for his brother, an evil crime lord known as "Knuckles" (Daniel Wu), and now Marvin, slightly rusty, must re-engage his fighting skills to take on one hitman after another. This leads to elongated fight scenes, one at Marvin's house that goes on for an eternity. He is thrown against walls, kitchen cabinets, tables and windows with such ferocious brutality that you'd think he might end up dead. How many punches and kicks to the face can anyone take? So many that, like a manic Warner Bros. cartoon, they get up and are able to run and drive without breaking a single bone. One unlucky accountant named Kippy (the always deliriously funny Rhys Darby), who works for Knuckles, loses two of his front teeth and a finger! Well, you know, you have that reality going for it.
Somewhere in this rigidly tight 83-minute madness is a thin story about Rose (Ariana DeBose), a tough lawyer who can shoot to kill and do a little combat fighting without breaking too much of a sweat (and had also severed that accountant's finger). She was supposed to be killed by Marvin in the past but he let her go because, you know, he loved her and this is a Valentine's Day picture. Everyone in this movie is capable of combat except the accountant. When you are a hired gun or minion or assassin working in a crime syndicate, combat training is apparently required because, you know, you have to fight Ke Huy Quan. This is a You Know-type of picture.
"Love Hurts" begins rather frantically and has nowhere to go except become more frantic. The only difference between this film and say "Nobody" is that at least "Nobody" had some believability and a more concentrated tone. Here, the movie wavers between unfunny black comedy, graphic violence and some romantic musings courtesy of the Raven and Marvin's depressed assistant (Lio Tipton), who falls for the Raven. Poetry will do that. "Love Hurts" is just generic, ultra-formulaic action you have seen a million times before but with no real urgency, though Ke works hard to make us care. We do, Ke, but please get more imaginative screenwriters.
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