‘Love Hurts’ Review: Ke Huy Quan’s Disappointing Leading Man Debut
Ke Huy Quan finally has an action vehicle to his name with Love Hurts, but his effervescent performance sadly can’t overcome the many hurdles this 83-minute-long affair is sadly stuck in.
To say I’ve been rooting for Ke Huy Quan’s success ever since he deservedly won an Academy Award for his performance as Waymond Wang in Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s Everything Everywhere All at Once is a real understatement. After gaining a considerable part within the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ouroboros in the second season of Loki and was confirmed to star in The Russo Brothers’ The Electric State, things seem to have been going relatively well for the Oscar winner, whose success story is one of the most rewarding moments of the 2020s in the entertainment world.
Obviously, with such a massive resurgence following Everything Everywhere All at Once, it was only natural that Ke would finally get the opportunity to lead a movie. And not just any movie: an actioner directed by Jonathan Eusebio, one of the fight coordinators of the John Wick franchise, who would make his debut behind the camera after years of being mentored by David Leitch with Love Hurts. In recent years, the John Wick co-director has supported stunt choreographers in making their mark in the film industry by directing action tentpoles themselves, such as stunt choreographer J.J. Perry who made his debut with Night Shift, and went on to direct The Killer’s Game last year.
It's only natural that Eusebio would want the same opportunity to showcase not only his choreographing capabilities but also demonstrate how capable of an artist he is at shooting action and giving it a distinct style to a genre that has grown staler within Hollywood. America has foregone all sense of formal innovation at the forefront of their action pictures, preferring sludgy, over-edited junk over death-defying choreographies, while figures like Kensuke Sonomura, Yugo Sakamoto, S.S. Rajamouli, and Soi Cheang constantly find new ways to reinvent the art of staging, choreographing, and shooting an action scene to transcend mere “popcorn” entertainment in their respective parts of the world.
Credit where credit is due: Eusebio knows how to choreograph action effectively. He seems to take pleasure in winking the audience with plenty of references to movies that inspired him, most notably the plethora of Shaw Brothers pictures displayed at a video store where Cam Gigandet’s Renny Merlow works. There are also weapons that Mustafa Shakir’s Raven uses that recall what we’d usually see in a Shaw film directed by Chang Cheh, Sun Chung, or Lau Kar-Leung. It’s playful enough to buy into the celebration Eusebio wants to lay out in front of the audience, as he puts Ke in a vehicle worthy of his newfound stature in Hollywood.
Yet, the action is so unimpressively captured and edited that no moment, no matter how violent it can get, feels remotely effective, or artistically compelling. It feels so strange that, even with Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir in the editing room, a frequent collaborator of Eusebio’s mentor, it looks like there isn’t anything salvageable in how the action is captured if it can’t be edited in a way that supports its photography. Cinematographer Bridger Nielson shoots the film’s breakneck fights with a far-too-clean sheen of a direct-to-video bargain bin product than a legitimate blockbuster with two Oscar winners at the forefront of it. Funnily enough, the actor who presented Ke Huy Quan with his trophy was Ariana DeBose, so it does feel right that the two are teaming up for this picture. From the looks of this movie, though, you’d never know DeBose won an Academy Award for one of the best performances of the decade in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story. It feels as though she never acted in a motion picture at all.
That reinterpretation of Anita positioned DeBose, who was at the time mostly known for her stage performances, to Hollywood superstardom in such rapid succession that she eventually landed a role in Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle and J.C. Chandor’s Kraven the Hunter, two pictures that had on-paper potential. But with flop after flop after flop, it seems as though she has forgotten what made her such an incredible, towering talent in the first place. It truly is incredible how she has zero sense of chemistry with Quan, who desperately tries his best to infuse life into this listless movie as Marvin Gable, a real-estate agent whose past as a hitman comes crawling back to him when the love of his life, Rose Carlisle (DeBose), returns after she was thought dead by Marvin’s ruthless brother, Knuckles (Daniel Wu).
The conceit is rudimentary enough, but it’s the execution that matters the most for such a title. Most actioners have a simple enough plot, but nobody cares about that. They want to see their lead actor kick tons of ass through insanely choreographed and artfully shot bouts of cathartic violence. Had Eusebio crafted action sequences that demonstrated his filmmaking prowess alongside intricate choreographies, perhaps it could’ve salvaged this relatively brisk affair. However, with Ronaldsdóttir constantly alternating between far too many stories that all intersect with Marvin’s quest of wanting to put his past behind him and obtain a normal life, the entire movie feels far too convoluted and ultimately unimportant.
Instead of naturally building up the antagonistic figures who will eventually go after Martin, Eusebio and writers Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore continuously parallel the protagonist’s story with other pointless sequences involving agents King (Marshawn Lynch) and Otis (André Eriksen) having their own problems, Raven falling in love with Marvin’s co-worker Ashley (Lio Tipton), or Sean Astin making an extended cameo for an unearned quasi-The Goonies reunion. All of these could’ve been interestingly developed and edited, but they’re so unimportant to Marvin’s quest that they quickly become forgettable when Eusebio doesn’t devote his focus to fruitless subplots that makes this short movie feel even longer.
This results in an unevenly balanced picture that attempts to do way too much in far too short of a time, ultimately forgetting that we’re here to watch Ke Huy Quan kick some ass, and not see André Eriksen’s character talk about how his wife left him. Perhaps many scenes were left on the cutting room floor, which would explain why the film is only about 75 minutes or so without credits. To its defense, though, it’s not an uncommon thing to be this quick in the Shaw Brothers world.
Yet, Eusebio never gives us a compelling reason to care about anyone on screen, and he would rather waste most of the rapid time he has with us to frivolous side-quests than build a rock-solid relationship between Quan and DeBose. The former’s ineffable charm and quick wit are enough for us to mildly care about him. However, as soon as he’s paired with DeBose, who gives a career-worst turn in a stint filled with bad career choices, the energy dries up so quickly one wonders if West Side Story was a fluke. It probably was. Spielberg is the greatest Hollywood filmmaker for a reason.
Eusebio eventually wraps up Love Hurts with a no-holds-barred climax that acts as the movie’s emotional apex, attempting to throw everything at the screen to see what sticks. There are a few moments of inspiration here and there, such as the idea of having an entire action beat scored to Barry White’s You’re the First, the Last, My Everything. Yet, it’s marred by unnaturally stilted pacing, flat shot composition, and nonsensical editing that never responds to the emotions the characters lay forward while fighting (action is emotion after all) that the entire section falls flat on its face. The good news for the audience is that, once all loose ends are tied, Eusebio abruptly stops the movie and finally release us from our seats, so we can leave this cinema quickly and hope that Ke’s next vehicle will be a considerable improvement than…whatever the hell this was.