Love Hurts

In Love Hurts, Marvin, a former hitman turned realtor, finds his peaceful life upended when his past catches up with him, forcing him to confront his former partner-in-crime… his brother. As Marvin navigates this deadly situation, he must decide whether to return to his old ways or find a new path forward.

Love Hurts Review

What did I just watch?

                   

Produced by the same people who brought us Nobody and Violent Night, Love Hurts is an enigma wrapped in a Jackie Chan movie, seasoned with Ernest Goes to Jail and topped with a counterfeit Tarantino.

The film is awful by all measurable criteria. It’s full of ridiculous characters, over-the-top yet middling action, mediocre performances, dumb characters, and bad dialogue. Beyond that, the premise is so far below the borderline that not even banging Forest Gump’s mom would be enough to get it into normie school. However, despite that, or by some Elon Musk-level 3D chess genius, it’s great—except that maybe it’s not.

As always, Ke Huy Quan is infinitely loveable, making it impossible not to root for him. Yet, the Academy Award-winner brings more to the role than merely his immeasurable charisma. The diminutive actor is fully invested in every aspect of his character, delivering a heartfelt and earnest performance that magically elevates all the over-the-top nonsense going on around him.

But that shouldn’t be enough to make the film worth watching or overcome everything technically wrong with it. And that’s where I’m stumped. I can’t tell if Love Hurts is a meta-aware satirical action comedy romance with a heart that wants you to laugh at it or a really really dumb action comedy romance with a heart that wants you to laugh with it.

My guess is that if you genuinely love movies like Big Trouble in Little China, you’ll get as big a kick out of Love Hurts as I did.  Just know that buying a ticket is a complete gamble.

P.S. It’s nothing like Big Trouble in Little China. You just have to have that kind of sensibility to like it.

WOKE REPORT

Token Gays

• The opening montage is of Marvin showing houses to various couples as he exposits his philosophy/sales pitch. One of the couples that we very briefly see is a lesbian couple.

Who’s The Girl Boss?

• The leading female character possesses many girl boss attributes: she’s ballsy, brash, and a tough talker who is fiercer than she has a right to be. That said, she is not the physical equal of the men around her and sort of needs to be rescued by the male hero at the end.
  • She’s definitely overpowered and has no business being as confident as she is, but she plays a smallish part in the film and can be forgotten entirely between her scenes.
  • Structurally, her part doesn’t work or fit and would have made much more sense as a traditional damsel in distress.