LOVE HURTS (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Love Hurts, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 7, 2025

It feels as if there's something missing from Love Hurts, and it goes beyond the threadbare plot and the thin characters. Those shortcomings would be easy enough to accept, because this is, after all, an action movie about a retired assassin who's pulled back into his formerly violent life. Such stories can pretty much write themselves at this point, although it apparently took three screenwriters to piece together this one.

That's besides the point, however, because the second act of Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore's script just sort of grinds everything to a halt. This section of the movie is filled with unnecessary voice-over narration, in which characters explain their simplistic motives and how they feel about their situation or each other, and a lot of circling around the same thematic and plot-based points by way of dialogue.

Did the trio simply run out of anything new to do with their basic setup, or did someone higher up declare some major trims to director Jonathan Eusebio's original version of the movie? Including credits, the movie runs 83 minutes, which feels hasty even for something as simple as this.

Whatever happened, that sudden and relatively long bit of stalling wrecks what starts as fairly entertaining action-filled comedy. Ke Huy Quan stars, and the actor, whose career has suddenly found new legs following some time off after his professional days as a kid and young man, is funny and charming and occasionally intense as the reformed killer. It's nice to see that Quan's surprise return to the spotlight wasn't simply a one-off moment, and here's hoping he finds material that's as well-suited to him as but less formulaic and cobbled-together than this.

Quan plays Marvin Gable, who now works as a real estate agent in the suburbs and has what appears to be a calm and happy life. He loves the job, giving people a chance to start a homelife like the one that has meant so much to him, and Quan's sincerity in the early parts of the story is infectious.

His contentment is interrupted, though, when he receives a note at the office with only two words written inside: "I'm back." It came from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a woman from Marvin's old life of crime, and we quickly learn that she betrayed a crime lord, who ordered Marvin to kill her. He was in love with Rose, however, and told her to disappear. Now, she wants her old life back, while Marvin is determined to protect his new one at almost any cost.

The premise is fine and amusing enough, especially since the screenplay gets to the action without much delay. Almost as soon as Marvin receives the note, he's confronted by another professional killed called the Raven (Mustafa Shakir), who was sent by Marvin's old boss Knuckles (Daniel Wu)—who happens to be his brother, by the way—to find out why Rose is still alive and where she is.

The ensuing brawl between the pair shows that Eusebio, a stunt coordinator making his directorial debut, has a fine handle on staging and shooting action. There's a good amount of humor to this fight and one other one, too, as Marvin uses the trappings of his new, ordinary life to defend himself, such as using a staple remover in his office to guard against the Raven's nasty blades. Back at home, Marvin is confronted by another pair of hired killers (played by Marshawn "Beastmode" Lynch and André Eriksen), and this time he has tools in his kitchen and plenty of counterspace to take on and evade those guys. Beyond that, each of Marvin's foes has some eccentricity to him (The Raven is an aspiring poet, and one of the other two is having difficulties with his girlfriend), so the characters here show signs of some personality to go along with the brawls.

As soon as Rose re-enters Marvin's life, though, everything crawls to a halt. It's not just the absence of action. It's also that the supposed potential romance between Marvin and Rose (who has some of that aforementioned narration, stating that she does see something in our hero) is explained but never communicated in a way to make it feel like, well, something with any potential. Add to that emotional hole a load of exposition explaining what Rose did (Rhys Darby is underutilized as the criminal accountant who does most of the talking), a generic villain in Cam Gigandet's right hand to Knuckles, and an odd subplot involving the Raven and Marvin's assistant (played by Lio Tipton) finding love, and the middle part of the movie is some heavy-duty friction for the momentum built until then.

The tone also becomes an issue, as a dreariness sets in during the second act and a couple of innocent characters are callously killed, while the bad guys receive nothing more than some cuts (They are deep ones, at least). The finale of Love Hurts is quite the brutal and bloody affair, really, which makes it feel contradictory to the more comedic violence and light-hearted approach of the earlier sections. It's an initially affable lark but ultimately, in sometimes bizarre and unnecessary ways, a mess.

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