February 11, 2025
by Carla Hay

Directed by Jonathan Eusebio
Culture Representation: Taking place in Milwaukee, the action comedy film “Love Hurts” features a racially diverse cast of characters (Asian, African American and white) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: A seemingly mild-mannered real-estate agent has a criminal past that catches up to him when his female former partner in crime and his crime boss brother both seek revenge on him.
Culture Audience: “Love Hurts” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and action flicks that care more about stunts than having a good story.

The only real pain in “Love Hurts” is watching Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose stuck in this cinematic junk. This mindless action comedy about double-crossing crooks is plagued with horrible dialogue and repetitive fighting that looks too fake. It’s an insult to movie fans that “Love Hurts” was released in theaters because it’s not worth the price of movie ticket and isn’t even worth people’s time to watch it elsewhere.
Directed by Jonathan Eusebio, “Love Hurts” was written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore. All that means is it took three people instead of one or two to come up with this garbage screenplay. “Love Hurts” is the feature-film directorial debut of Eusebio, who has a background in stunt coordination. It’s probably why the movie is so enamored with its fight scenes and doesn’t care that the screenplay is recycled trash.
“Love Hurts” takes place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but was actually filmed in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It’s a simple-minded plot that gets dragged out by fight scenes that become so mind-numbing, they actually make the movie very boring. Most of the cast members don’t even try to make the stupid dialogue sound convincing. “Love Hurts” is so lazy, all of the story’s ideas have been done before in other movies, but much better in most of these other films.
In “Love Hurts,” Marvin Gable (played by Quan, the Oscar-winning actor from 2022’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once”) is a mild-mannered, dorky real-estate agent who is a bachelor with no children. Marvin, who travels by bicycle, works for a company named Frontier Realty, which has ads with his photo in various places, such as bus stop benches. Marvin’s biggest rival is Jeff Zaks (played by Drew Scott of “Property Brothers” reality TV fame), who has a macho image in his ads.
Most of “Love Hurts” takes place close to Valentine’s Day. Marvin is the type of real-estate agent who will give Valentine’s Day cookies to prospective clients when he shows them houses. During the movie, he gets a Regional Realtor of the Year plaque award from his boss/mentor Cliff Cussick (played by Sean Astin), in a role that reunites former “Goonies” stars Quan and Astin. Marvin’s assistant is a mopey bachelorette Ashley (played by Lio Tipton), who is pessimistic about finding true love.
In the beginning of the movie, Marvin notices that someone has been defacing his real-estate ads by drawing a Hitler moustache on his face. At first, Marvin immediately suspects that his competitor Zaks is behind this insulting graffiti. But then, Marvin gets an ominous note in the mail indicating there’s someone else who has a grudge against him. The note says, “I’m Back!”
The movie then has very sloppy editing by showing Marvin getting knocked unconscious by someone who was in his office. Marvin wakes up to find that a knife has been plunged into his left hand. A thug named the Raven (played by Mustafa Shakir) is holding him hostage behind the closed office door because the Raven wants Marvin to tell the Raven where someone named Rose Carlisle (played by DeBose) is located. Marvin knows who Rose is but she says he doesn’t know where she is.
As already revealed in the “Love Hurts” trailer, it turns out that Rose was the one who sent that mysterious note to Marvin. She’s out for revenge because Marvin had a previous life as an assassin, Rose was his partner in crime, and he betrayed her on a job that they did together and left her for dead. Marvin then started a new life as a realtor. Marvin says early on in the movie that he’s in love with Rose.
The Raven works for Marvin’s crime boss brother Alvin “Knuckles” Gable (played by Daniel Wu), who wants to find Rose and who is also estranged from Marvin. Knuckles has also dispatched a goon named Renny Merlo (played by Cam Gigandet) to find Rose and tells Renny that Rose has to be brought back alive to Knuckles. Marvin is also on Knuckles’ target list because Knuckles hates that Marvin has rejected Knuckles and a life of crime.
Meanwhile, two dimwitted hoodlums named King (played by Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch) and Otis (played by André Eriksen) do a home invasion on Marvin and beat him up because they’re looking for Rose too, and they think Marvin has the answer. Rose does some roughing up of her own when she captures a criminal associate named Kippy Betts (played by Rhys Darby), who is tied up and forced to make a confession. It should come as no surprise when secrets are revealed about who betrayed whom in this silly jumble of unlawful schemes and trickery.
All of these criminal characters are shallow, with nothing interesting revealed about them—unless you think it’s interesting that Otis tells King that Otis’ wife recently left Otis because she thinks Otis is “emotionally constipated,” which is an accurate way to describe this time-wasting movie. All of the performances are mediocre at best or unwatchable at worst. And none of the characters can be considered “compelling” or “impressive.”
When Rose inevitably shows up and sees Marvin again, it’s when they are both at a bar. Marvin asks her, “Why couldn’t you just stay dead?” Rose answers, “Because it’s humiliating.” Although it surely couldn’t be as humiliating as being an Oscar winner going from winning many awards for a Steven Spielberg movie (DeBose won an Academy Award for Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story”) to the tacky depths of “Love Hurts,” which looks like it belongs on a low-tier, free streaming service.
“Love Hurts” shows people getting beaten, shot, kicked, stabbed or punched every 10 minutes, with moronic dialogue in between. After a while, it becomes tiresome to watch. Somehow, the Raven and Ashley end up spending time together in a subplot that is transparent about its intentions.
The “romance” between Marvin and Rose never looks convincing. And that’s not just because there’s an age gap that perpetuates the sexist stereotype of a middle-aged male star of an action film having a love interest who’s about 10 to 20 years younger. Quan (who was 53 when this movie was released) and DeBose (who was 34) have no real chemistry with each other.
Quan is very likable in other movies, but his “Love Hurts” performance is an awkward mix of portraying a cheerful nerd and a hardened fighter. The movie (which has obvious stunt doubles for the cast members) can never give a clear sense of who Marvin really is. “Love Hurts” depicts Marvin and everyone else as underdeveloped characters that you won’t care about by the end of this dreadful movie. And when “Love Hurts” tries to tack on sappy sentimentality at the end, after showing so much over-the-top violence, it’s about as satisfying as an empty box of Valentine’s Day candy.
Universal Pictures released “Love Hurts” in U.S. cinemas on February 7, 2025.