Love Hurts info:
Director: Jonathan Eusebio
Writer: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore
Starring: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Mustafa Shakir, and Lio Tipton
Hello and welcome to another week here at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. By the time this is posted it will be almost Valentine’s Day, so this week I picked a movie that goes along with that with “Love Hurts”. It was so fun to see Ke Huy Quan starring in an action movie and this gave me huge “Nobody” vibes with Bob Odenkirk. I have lots to say about this one, so before I go any further and give something away, let me get the official spoiler warning out of the way now. I will be talking about major plot points and the ending, so if you don’t want to know what happens yet, please go here, and check out some other reviews I have ready to read, then come back here when you are ready to read this one.
Ok, so jumping right into it. I know I’ve talked about this in the past, but sometimes you see a trailer for a movie and think they gave the whole thing away, but then you are pleasantly surprised at how well the trailer was put together. This is not one of those movies unfortunately. If you’ve seen the whole trailer, then you pretty much know exactly what happens in the whole movie. Not only does that make me sad, but it’s also poor trailer production. I was super pumped to watch this based on what I had saw, then let down knowing that there were no surprises in store other than non-important ones. Another fun fact is this is Jonathan Eusebio’s first directing gig. He has spent most of his time as a stunt coordinator, so that explains a lot of the action in this movie.
So, “Love Hurts” starts out with Marvin (Quan) seemingly living his perfect life as a realtor. Everything is going his way and he just won a regional realtor award. But all that changes when he gets a love letter in the mail from a former associate named Rose (DeBose). Soon after he gets a visit from The Raven (Shakir) who hides in his office and tries to kill him when he returns. It seems his brother is also looking for him. He gets stabbed, but you can tell that he has some pretty good fighting abilities already.
Trying to make a getaway, Marvin goes to his house only to be met by two of his brother’s goons…King (the delightful Marshawn Lynch) and Otis (André Eriksen). After the best fight scene of the whole movie takes place, Marvin gets away only to be caught by Rose. This is where the start of the “love story” takes place. In a flashback, we see that Rose used to work for Marvin’s brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu) and it was his job to take her out to the middle of nowhere to kill her. Since he loved her, he didn’t do it. He let her go and went off to start a different life somewhere on his own.
As Rose tries to convince Marvin to help her, Renny Merlo (Cam Gigandet) tries to track both of them down. It seems that Merlo is the real culprit behind everything, and he just wants to cover his tracks. Honestly, after the start I had great hopes, but this is where it starts to go downhill. The weird thing going on between The Raven and Marvin’s assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) goes on way too long and that’s saying something since overall this movie is way too short. I also don’t think that Knuckles is a very convincing crime syndicate leader. Sure, he has his moments, like when he stabs poor Cliff (Sean Astin) in the eye with a boba straw, but overall he doesn’t fit that mold.
But, the rushed story is where “Love Hurts” truly falters. The runtime of this whole film clocks in at less than one hour and 30 minutes. There are episodes of television shows that are just as long as that. We could have used more backstory on Marvin and Rose, we could have had more epic fight scenes like we saw in Marvin’s house, but ultimately it needed to expand on the love interest between the two main characters. Sure, they get together in the end, but we get almost no signs that it’s going to happen until it does.
Eventually Marvin decides to help Rose and everything comes to a head at Knuckles’ headquarters. The two sweep through the place and take out all of the thugs trying to stop them. All this only to have a lackluster final battle with his brother, who apparently has been stealing from the Russians. Which Rose knew about and set him up. So, lots of layers upon layers as the story comes to a close. To be straight, I am fine with complicated layers like this because it makes sense and it’s easy to follow unlike some movies that over-complicate things for no reason.
In the end, this is a very fun movie, but is also a bit of a let down. The cast is fun with a few other names not mentioned also showing up. Quan showed that he can play a legit action star, regardless of how the script is written. I’m hoping there is more content that made it on the cutting room floor and we can get an uncut version of “Love Hurts” later in the year. With all that being said, I want to give this a higher score, but I can’t give it more than a 6 out of 10 due to all the shortcuts they took in the editing process.
That’s it for this week here at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. Have you seen “Love Hurts” yet? Do you think that Ke Huy Quan does a good job at playing an action star? What is your take on the length of the film? Too short or just right for you? Let me know in the comments below and I will be back next week… most likely with my review of “Captain America: Brave New Word”!
