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Go behind the scenes of Love Hurts with star Ke Huy Quan
Featurette: Universal Pictures

Love Hurts
Directed by Jonathan Eusebio
Rated R
Bruised 7 February 2025
#LoveHurtsMovie

The likable cast makes Love Hurts a sweet – but ultra-violent – guilty pleasure.

Be Mine

Love Hurts movie poster featuring Ke Huy Quan

It’s a ridiculous movie. There’s no getting around it.

Somehow, two Oscar winners, a former NFL player, one-half of the Property Brothers, a Goonies reunion, a stunt man making his directing debut, three screenwriters with lackluster resumes, and producers behind movies including the John Wick series and Violent Night have all come together to make a romantic comedy that runs a scant 80-or-so minutes.

And – somehow, against all odds – it works. Mostly.

But wait. A romantic comedy?

Yeah. That’s the surprising part. Sure, Love Hurts takes place on Valentine’s Day (the love) and it features loads of knife- and gun-play (the hurt). But, unexpectedly, not one but two love stories develop. One is silly (but thankfully not in a Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey kind of way). One actually has some – sigh – heart to it (in a "love conquers all" and "age is just a number" kind of way).

The world these characters live in centers around real estate and a strange, ambiguous business with an old-school video store (complete with rental DVDs, a CD jukebox and standalone arcade games) that’s a front for some sort of entanglements with the Russian mafia. Maybe even the Baba Yaga.

Who knows? Probably not even the writers.

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One word sums up Love Hurts: unlikely. That goes for the overall production, not just the narrative.

And that story revolves around Marvin Gable, played by Ke Huy Quan, the Oscar-winning actor from Everything Everywhere All at Once, but much more importantly, he was Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Quan has a timeless innocence and charm about him, both off-screen and here as Marvin, a go-getter real estate agent. But he’s an agent with a deep dark past.

That dangerous past is brought back to the present by the return of Rose Carlisle, played by Ariana DeBose, the Oscar-winning actress from Steven Spielberg’s masterful West Side Story. She wants her life back and Marvin is key to making that happen.

But Marvin doesn’t want to go back to his old life. He really, really loves his new life, a life he’s worked hard to achieve. He bakes heart-shaped cookies and hands them out to colleagues and customers, all while eagerly looking for the next family to be made happy by his impeccable services. It’s an award-winning life, formally recognized by his new Sales Person of the Year award, a certificate beautifully printed and suitably framed. And it’s presented to him by his boss, Cliff Cussick. He’s played by Quan’s fellow Goonie, Sean Astin.

Short story made shorter, both Marvin and Rose have been victimized by a guy named Knuckles (Daniel Wu, Tomb Raider). He’s also known as Alvin Gables. He’s Marvin’s brother and Alvin’s some sort of crime lord who runs that video store. Like the best of the Bond villains, Knuckles has a tic, an affectation. He can’t get enough boba. Suitably, his talents include the ability to use his boba straw like a dagger.

Anyway, let’s just say Rose and Marvin need to "clear the air" with Knuckles and get their respective lives back in order. Years ago, Rose was framed in a heist involving $4 million while Marvin betrayed his brother by not following his command: kill Rose. Maybe – just maybe – there’s a little attraction between the two of ‘em.

But that love story’s endangered by a gang of Knuckles’ hoodlums who are out to wreak havoc, kill Rose and Marvin and destroy all kinds of mass-produced homes. One of them is – unlikely – former NFL superstar Marshawn "Beastmode" Lynch. Give the guy some credit; he seems quite comfortable in his role.

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As the movie opens, Marvin narrates his tale and waxes semi-poetic about the grandeur and promise of Valentine’s Day. It’s a day, he posits, during which something special can happen that changes life’s course for the better.

Could it be amid all the over-the-top, bloody action there’s a smidge of subtlety in Love Hurts? Nah. Maybe "subtle" is too strong a word, but the theme of Marvin’s message certainly applies to his entanglements with Rose as well as with another – unlikely – couple.

Ashley (Lio Tipton, Vengeance) works for Marvin and unwittingly gets embroiled in the madness when she finds a seemingly dead assassin in Marvin’s office. That guy’s called the Raven. He’s tall. He’s menacing. His trench coat is lined with all manner of cutlery. His mind is full of poetry. And he’s gamely played by Mustafa Shakir (The Deuce TV series).

They become that other – unlikely – love story. And theirs is pretty funny.

Take Love Hurts for what it is. Utter nonsense but – pardon the expression – it’s nonsense with quite a bit of heart. Its entertainment value extends out to a very inspired and funny cameo by Drew Scott, one of the Property Brothers, as a competing real estate agent with a penchant for picking fights.

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Along with that opening romantic view of Valentine’s Day as a day of life-altering possibilities, there are some other pearls of wisdom that slide in amid the bloodshed.

"If you find something you love, you need to go after it," Marvin counsels Ashley. And there’s also something of a refrain, "Hiding ain’t living." That includes hiding from the past, hiding from confrontation and even hiding from the magic of Cupid’s arrow.

Those are all thoroughly appropriate and help provide some balance to the nonsense. But there’s one scene that offers an idea that should’ve been exploited more. As Marvin laments the loss of the life he’s grown to love, his assailants (Lynch being one of them) express some envy and ask Marvin if the dream life he’s attained is out of their reach.

His is a completely sensible response. "Anything’s possible. How’s your credit?" There’s something in that simple exchange that could’ve brought a little more gravitas (yikes; "gravitas" is definitely too strong a word in this context) to all the Looney Tunes-style antics.

Make no mistake about it. Given its slight 80-minute runtime and modest ambitions, Love Hurts shouldn’t top the list of must-see theatrical releases. Give it a few weeks and catch it on Peacock.

Yeah. That’s right. In the comfort of your own home.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.