Ke Huy Quan stars as Marvin Gable in Love Hurts.Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures/Universal Pictures
- Love Hurts
- Directed by JoJo Eusebio
- Written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore
- Starring Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose and Daniel Wu
- Classification 14A; 83 minutes
- Opens in theatres Feb. 7
In the silly Valentine-themed action romp Love Hurts, Ke Huy Quan stars as an eager and affable realtor. We meet his Marvin Gable hopping around Winnipeg (staged to look like Milwaukee) using light karate chops to fluff pillows, greeting clients with heart-shaped cookies and scrubbing away the mustaches people draw on the public bench ads featuring his mug.
Marvin also happens to be hiding from his past. He was once a brute gang enforcer – more likely using a pen to stab people in the neck than jot down amendments on home offers. But the whole realtor schtick is a reinvention he’s completely committed to, finding legitimate joy and satisfaction when he pairs a family with just the right L-shaped kitchen. When a bunch of goons delivering comeuppance for Marvin’s past blow shotgun holes through one couple’s suburban dream home, he keeps a frantic ear-to-ear grin assuring his clients that he knows people who can patch things up like new.
Reinvention is of course key to Quan’s appeal. His Oscar winning role in Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was about a Chinese family who gets dragged into multiverse mayhem, had Quan playing a pushover husband, who in alternate dimensions is a world-saving martial artist or a debonair love interest straight out of a Wong-Kar wai romance. That movie also transformed Quan from forgotten child star (whose early brushes with fame in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and The Goonies quickly fizzled out) to beloved marquee action hero, a reinvention Love Hurts is trying to squeeze more mileage from, but with diminishing returns.
These narratives can feel like a bit of schtick for 87North, the production company co-founded by John Wick director David Leitch. This is the house where former stunt performers like Leitch and Love Hurts director JoJo Eusebio can turn over a new leaf and become filmmakers, while telling stories about men who seem to belong in the background (you know, like stunt performers) with a hidden talent for plowing through drywall and driving up insurance rates. See also Nobody, where Bob Odenkirk cycles through the same plot mechanics as Quan in Love Hurts.
Former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch is devilishly amusing as a goon who on his downtime offers up Valentine’s Day advice to his kill squad comrade.Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures/Universal Pictures
Whatever novelty the 87North brand brought to the table – chiefly a penchant for real hand-to-hand and behind-the-wheel theatrics as opposed to the heavily CGI-d action scenes in most movies – it has long since worn thin, especially since movies such as Love Hurts barely reinforce the nifty roundhouse kicks and weaponized household utensils with any conviction in their storytelling. The plot and most action sequences here are as cookie-cutter as the community homes Quan’s Gable is selling.
His new life as the regional top-seller, competing against another top realtor played by Drew Scott of Property Brothers fame, is upended when Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) arrives on scene. The fellow Oscar winner, who presented Quan with his prize at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony, plays Marvin’s former love Rose. She’s stirring up trouble, sending cryptic Valentines to Marvin, his boba-sipping crime boss brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu) and more foes from their underworld past who are holding a vendetta over missing millions stashed in a duffel bag.
Rose also works overtime to convince the wilder, darker Marvin to break out from his current affable billboard-ready demeanour. In a stilted performance that betrays his limitations, Quan can’t tap into this harder edge that every other character keeps telling us is there.
He’s much better at selling the action, leaping over fences and countertops and unleashing jabs that send goons flying during fight scenes that only occasionally feel inventive. A brawl where the camera observes the combat from inside kitchen appliances stands out.
So, too, does a supporting cast that make Love Hurts moderately likeable whenever it turns its attention from the main plot. You could build a superior romcom around Lio Tipton’s fellow realtor, who gets swept up by an assassin (Mustafa Shakir) sent to kill Marvin after she discovers the poetry he’s been writing on the side. And former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch is devilishly amusing as a goon who on his downtime offers up Valentine’s Day advice to his kill squad comrade (André Eriksen), who’s dealing with his own relationship woes at home.
That these typically expendable henchmen never die, no matter what bodily harm befalls them, is one of the movie’s charms. They’re given the space to not just keep fighting but also show off their more collegial nature. It’s a lovely gimmick in keeping with Love Hurts’s whole vibe, where it’s all about discovering an unexpected side in people – and rooting for a reinvention that actually works.
