Love Hurts really lives up to its name, because this movie really hurt to watch. If you are hoping to see an action romance with strong chemistry and interesting fight scenes, this film is not what you would be expecting. But, before you can grasp what made this movie so bad, you first need to know the plot. The film follows Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan), a mob hitman turned realtor, fighting for his life after he gets pulled back into the scheme that allowed him to leave the mob life years prior.
About the Story
The movie starts with Marvin getting attacked by a slew of hitmen forcing him to flee from his peaceful life. Marvin, his brother Alvin, and second-in-command Merlow, all receive letters from former mob lawyer Rose, who stole from the company. Supposed to be killed by Marvin years ago, she escaped assassination due to Marvin’s feelings for her. Alvin is a great villain because his only character traits are loving boba and being mean, and he uses a boba straw like a Damascus steel combat knife throughout the movie.
A hitman working for Alvin called “The Raven” wakes up after being knocked out and meets Marvin’s assistant, Ash. She reads his poetry and falls in love with its dark themes. This is surprising considering the poetry is so bad that listening to it will make you wish that The Raven had been hired to kill you. Rose kidnaps the mob’s accountant, Kippy, and meets up with Marvin at one of the homes he is selling. Rose wants her life back and wants to know who in the organization ordered her dead.
The two hitmen working for Merlow, King and Otis, are tasked to kill Marvin and Rose while Kippy escapes. Ash accidentally tells The Raven where Marvin is, but convinces him not to kill Marvin. He then helps Marvin fight off King and Otis. After a tense fight, Marvin meets up with Rose and together they take down Merlow and Alvin.
Criticisms
For a movie taking place on Valentine’s Day, and considered a romance, one would expect some chemistry between the characters. Unfortunately, all the characters are flat and dry. Any amount of chemistry would require a level of character depth that simply just is not there. This all led to a major selling point of this movie being, at the least, massively underwhelming, and at most, painful to watch.
This point leads to the second flaw with this movie, the scripting. The poor writing leads to little investment from the viewer into the characters. This caused the other major selling point of this movie, the fight scenes, to be too low-stakes to be enjoyable. This all makes the already bland fight scenes less appealing and difficult to watch.
The only part of this movie that was even a little enjoyable was Otis and King’s side story. Otis is fighting with his girlfriend over his “emotional constipation”, with King supporting him while they try to kill Marvin. They were humorous and entertaining characters who had good friendly chemistry. Their likable characters in the film in turn allowed for more investment in the story, instead of the main characters. And yes, if you’re wondering, they do end up using a giant fork and spoon to beat up The Raven in the emotional climax of the movie.
Final Verdict
All in all, Love Hurts is a boring regurgitation of enjoyable hand-to-hand style fighting action movies that all came out forty to fifty years ago. Of which any number probably has a better love story than the one in this movie marketed by and centered around its love story. In the end, Love Hurts gets a 3 out of 10, because while it’s not irredeemable, it’s pretty close.
