It’s a tale as old as time. Actor gets work with not one, but multiple top-tier directors, and then finds themselves struggling to get work. Most times, those actors fade into obscurity if they can’t pivot. One such actor, Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), pivoted into stunt work and choreography and worked on productions like The Matrix (1999) under famed Hong Kong creative Woo Ping and The One (2001). Thankfully, The Daniels cast Quan in the award-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) as the lead’s supporting husband Waymond, which reminded audiences why they’d loved him before and resulting in his incredible performance being rewarded with both an Oscar for the role and more role offers in upcoming projects (the true prize). Quan would go on to lead the Hong Kong homage, action, rom-com Love Hurts, the feature directorial debut for Jonathan Eusebio that also features Ariana Debose (West Side Story; Kraven the Hunter) and Daniel Wu (Gorgeous; New Police Story). It’s now set for a physical release with a small collection of bonus features that invite audiences to look behind the scenes and see just how much love went into making things hurt.
L-R: Actor Ke Huy Quan and director Jonathan Eusebio on the set of LOVE HURTS. Photo Credit: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The only things that straight-laced and warm realtor Marvin Gable (Quan) truly fears is the competition from rival Jeff Zaks (Drew Scott) and that he might never make Regional Realtor of the Year. That is, until he receives a letter decorated in calligraphy from Rose (Debose), a woman he thought long gone, followed by the arrival of not one hitman, but three, looking for her and willing to draw blood to get answers. But these hitmen know something that all of Marvin’s co-workers don’t: he’s a former hitman himself. Torn between the life he wants and the life he had, Marvin will have to make a choice and it’s going to hurt.
Written by Matthew Murray (CloudStreet: Soaring the American West), Josh Stoddard (Sheltered), and Luke Passmore (The Day), Love Hurts is designed like a great deal of Hong Kong actioners before it: short, sweet, and to the point. This design not only empowers the stunt work to be creative as it taps into both Quan’s and Wu’s backgrounds, it utilizes a focus on action as an equal tool for moving the narrative forward in the same vein as dialogue. You want to know something about Louis Koo’s Cyclone in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024), notice how he fights in his introduction and how his style (the aggression, specifically) adjusts depending on who his opponent is. Consequentlly, in order to demonstrate Marvin’s struggle to acknowledge who he was in order to maintain the illusion of who he is now, his fighting style is more defensive and restraint-oriented, the goal being to get away, rather than to disable his opponent. Through the course of the film, as he starts to listen to Rose who keeps telling him he’s hiding, his fighting becomes more aggressive, more confident, and far more direct and incapacitating. Discussed within both featurettes “The Ke to Gable” and “Stunts Hurt,” much of Marvin’s fighting style is modeled after Jackie Chan (Project A; Gorgeous; Rumble in the Bronx), one of Hong Kong’s great physical performers and utilizers of circumstantial elements to make fights appear improvised. It’s worth noting that both featurettes point out Quan’s background in stunt work and his time working within the Hong Kong scene, so this isn’t just pulling a single high-profile Asian actor start out of the ether. (Not that 87North Productions, the group behind the stunts hasn’t already demonstrated their deep well of affection for Asian cinema through their work in films like The Fall Guy (2024), Violent Night (2022), Nobody (2021), and the John Wick series (201-2023).) So, when we observe Marvin fighting in the early action scenes and he’s clinging to a recently-received object, that same object that makes defending himself harder either by being in his hands or tripping up his feet, the audience quickly understands that this object is representative of the life Marvin is desperate to cling to, even if it kills him. It’s a small thing and very on-the-nose, but when your runtime is 83 minutes, you don’t have time to lay tracks, you just get down and dirty and fast.
L-R: Ke Huy Quan as Marvin Gable and Ariana DeBose as Rose Carlisle in LOVE HURTS, directed by Jonathan Eusebio. Photo Credit: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The focus on brevity is both strength and a weakness for the film as its conciseness means that there’s very little slowdown, allowing the intensity to be maintained fairly consistently throughout; however, this also means that the film doesn’t dig in as deeply as one might want in order to satisfy the emotional elements that the narrative utilizes. This means that the film must rely on narrative shortcuts like narration, primarily from Marvin and once from Rose (which is a strange interruption as it starts to confuse whose story we’re watching), or frequent flashbacks to fill in gaps, rather than trusting the audience to get what’s going on. Of course, adding the flashbacks helps Love Hurts to hit feature length, which ends up creating a problem where the film is both too long and too short because of its structure — never quite digging in enough beyond the surface in order to focus on action, using tricks to fill in gaps where spending a little more time would help. It’s an odd conundrum amplified by the fact that the characters often seem like they’re each in a different film within the same scene.
With Hong Kong actioners like Magic Cop (1990) and The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988), the cast of characters either fits into the strait-laced or slightly-goofy category, enabling the narratives to walk the line between sensational and grounded. Love Hurts has Quan’s portrayal of Marvin rooted firmly in the stereotype of a normal life whereas Debose’s Rose is a femme fatale from a ‘70s noir complete with big performance and cheetah-fur coat whereas Wu’s Knuckles feels inspired by Norman Chui’s Lin Wan in the 1980 wuxia The Sword, a proper villain of class and stature. When you throw in the stoic/poetic hitman The Raven (portrayed with powerful charisma by Mustafa Shakir (Ghosted; Shaft (2000)) and the goofy buddy duo Otis and King (André Eriksen and Marshawn Lynch, respectively), the film seems to be reaching for John Wick-levels of unique hitmen and, instead, it comes off as forced and unfocused. One can certainly make the case that Otis and King are technically working for Knuckles’ number two Renny (Cam Gigandet), but still – even the evil gang in Come Drink with Me (1966) had a single theme from which to build their individual identities and abilities around. It’s in this vein that Love Hurts feels like the kind of homage that tells you its an homage without creating a cohesion that demonstrates it. As such, for all the cool things it has going for it, they feel singular and far between instead of consistent from start to finish.
L-R: Lio Tipton as Ashley, Ke Huy Quan as Marvin Gable, and Mustafa Shakir as The Raven in LOVE HURTS, directed by Jonathan Eusebio. Photo Credit: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
With this being a home release, it’s worth noting that all of the available editions (physical and digital) include a brief alternate ending, eight deleted/extended scenes, and three featurettes. The alt-ending is interesting for how it seems committed to the bit that Marvin has to accept his old life to create harmony in his current one, but it’s not as satisfying as the official ending. Likewise, there’s very little in the deleted/extended scenes that will make one question why any of it was cut. Thankfully, the combined 21 minutes of behind-the-scenes materials will help anyone who questions why Quan was tapped to lead this to understand why. Through conversations with cast, crew, and the producing team, audiences are invited to watch Quan work with the previs team to develop blocking for his stunts, listen to the cast talk about the work on set (including an amusing first impression story from Quan and Lynch), and quite a bit more. For those who expected a fuller story in the vein of past 87North productions like Nobody and Violent Night, these featurettes express the true intent of the film as a Hong Kong homage.
Since Universal Pictures was kind enough to send a 4K UHD edition of Love Hurts for review, it’s worth noting that the 4K UHD edition is fairly strong. Especially in the scenes inside Knuckles’s LKP office, the HDR enables the colors to pop while remaining clear and vibrant. There’s a great deal of color bleed with the use of purple inside and outside of the office that’s more noticeable when viewing the digital edition via MoviesAnywhere, whereas the purple is present and more distinct on the 4K UHD. Unlike the aforementioned 87North films, much of Love Hurts takes place during the day and the colors are more natural, indicative of the “normal” life that Marvin seeks. This translates to the usual white/beige of staged homes (he is a realtor, after all) which the HDR and additional details of the 4K UHD disc make sharp and distinct, with good detail. In terms of the technical perspective, (1) Universal uses a BD 66 (meaning a dual-layer 66 GB disc) which is not the largest capacity disc, but, given the brevity of the film and bonus features, does provide ample space for all the materials without extensive compression. (2) This translates to a fairly solid bitrate during the presentation that hovers around the 70s Mbps and hold there for the majority of the presentation. Given that 40 Mbps is the max Blu-ray, the 4K UHD edition offers nearly double the bitrate, even if it’s not near the max output of what a 4K UHD is capable of in ideal conditions. This means that with the right set-up, you’re going to get a solid picture and good sound.
L-R: Cam Gigandet as Renny Merlo and Daniel Wu as Alvin “Knuckles” Gable in LOVE HURTS, directed by Jonathan Eusebio. Photo Credit: Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Love Hurts is a fine action rom-com and a decent Hong Kong homage. But that’s really it. That’s its big crime: it’s just fine. Considering the talent involved in this, audiences are likely going to have high expectations and those are going to be hard to meet under any circumstances. The stunts are entertaining, the performances (though incongruous with each other) demonstrate that the cast is at least willing to go all-in on whatever they’re doing, and one will feel covered in love by its end. It’s just not the kind of big screen follow-up that audiences who loved Quan in EEAAO may respond to as equally, even as Quan’s Marvin includes many of the characteristics of Waymond’s multiversal selves. Love can hurt, but it also contains hope and, for this reviewer, it’s that Love Hurts is just a bump in the road on the way to something even better for Quan.
Love Hurts Special Features:
- Alternate Ending (1:53)
- Eight (8) Deleted and Extended Scenes
- The Ke to Gable (3:32)
- The Heart of Love Hurts (7:34)
- Stunts Hurt (10:36)
Available on VOD and digital February 25th, 2025.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD April 1st, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Universal Pictures Love Hurts webpage.
Final Score: 2.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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