Love Hurts (2025)

 

Love Hurts (2025)

 

2/10

Starring

Ke Huy Quan

Ariana DeBose

Daniel Wu

Mustafa Shakir

 

Directed by Jonathan Eusebio

 

There was this feeling of being out of place when I saw Ke Huy Quan going through the motions of acting like a real estate agent. The performance wasn’t strong enough in this role to draw me in. Then came the moment he starts fighting martial arts, and suddenly, it felt alright. The movie was just ten minutes in, and I was captivated by the sudden shift from out-of-place real estate agent to secret martial arts fighter. We now see that he has a secret life, but sadly, that tone shift was the only exciting thing that happened in this movie.

Love Hurts has really good action scenes, but that’s it. There’s a lack of chemistry, and the dialogue between the cast doesn’t always flow as neatly as you’d expect.

This movie has bad comedy—the scenes where the jokes are meant to land aren’t funny. It’s not that the joke flew over your head; it’s just actually not funny at all. The writing is poor, and the first-time director—well, it’s obvious he’s just starting out because the movie’s tone jumps all over the place, thanks to the uneven pacing.

The thing that annoys me the most is the unrealistic way the characters behave around one another or how they react to situations, it’s just odd. You don’t step into a room, see a man you presumed dead on the floor, then pick up his notebook and start reading his poetry out loud like it’s a casual afternoon. You don’t even call the police—you call your boss, whose office you just found the dead body in. And guess what she does on that call? She tells him how amazing the poetry is (after briefly mentioning the dead guy) and then starts reading it to him over the phone. Where is the urgency? You just saw a presumed dead guy on the floor—where’s the call to the police? Where’s the panic?

The movie plot is about a retired hitman named Marvin (Ke Huy Quan), who is now hiding out as a realtor. But his past resurfaces when his brother hunts him down, sending an assassin to his office to ask about the whereabouts of a woman named Rose. Marvin knocks out the assassin in his office and runs home, only to be attacked by two more goons, also looking for Rose. When the movie actually starts, we see a woman defacing Marvin’s realtor signs all over town. It’s not hard to figure out that she’s the Rose everyone is looking for.

The first twenty minutes keep things vague, never making it clear whether Marvin actually knows where she is—but you can guess that he does. My biggest question is this: the movie tells us that Marvin was supposed to kill her but let her go instead, which is why everyone is after him for her whereabouts, because they know she is alive. How did they come to that conclusion, you may ask, well she stirred things up by sending letters to everyone when she was supposed to be in hiding.

Do you want to see this movie? I’d advise that you don’t.