Love Hurts (2025)

March 11, 2025 9:42 AM

[TRAILER] Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) is a realtor working the Milwaukee suburbs, where 'For Sale' signs bloom. He receives a crimson envelope from the mysterious Rose (Ariana DeBose), a former partner-in-crime that he had left for dead. She’s not happy. Marvin's brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu), a volatile crime lord, is hunting him, and he's not happy either. Marvin struggles to preserve his cozy new life, explore his connection with Rose, as killers come at him from all sides.

Also starring Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Cam Gigandet, Marshawn Lynch, André Eriksen, Rhys Darby, Sean Astin.

Directed by Jonathan Eusebio. Written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, Luke Passmore. Produced by Kelly McCormick, David Leitch, Guy Danella. Cinematography by Bridger Nielson. Edited by Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir. Music by Dominic Lewis.

18% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

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posted by DirtyOldTown (10 comments total)

I don't know who thought the David Leitch production assembly line that gave us John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Nobody was due for a romcom/you-messed-with-the-wrong-guy hybrid, but if there was a film that could make that work... this ain't it. (If you want to see a functional romcom get stitched onto a different genre, wtach Heart Eyes, the romcom/slasher that came out earlier this year. That was fun.)

The reason why movies like Nobody work is that they straddle the line between making violence awful and exhilarating. Bob Odenkirk's character in that movie was sick in his soul with violence, and even as we could rock out to him kicking ass, it was a bit like watching a heroin-addicted musician shoot up and then play a rocking show. It looked cool, but we knew it wasn't helping him and that was the drama. He was making his life worse.

The Marvin-hates-violence-and-prefers-being-a-realtor schtick, by comparison, is about a fingernail deep and played very silly. Can you believe this little guy is kicking ass? I mean, yeah. Not only do we know who the actor is and what he is capable of doing, but we know this genre of movie. It's somewhere beyond predictable. And Marvin doesn't really get forced into any choices that make for a real conflict about what he can do. He's just saving people.

The action sequences themselves are pitched at something like the level of the stuff in Bullet Train in terms of goofiness, but they aren't clever or cruel enough to have even that amount of bite. They're cheeky without being surprising, elaborate and choreographed without being visceral.

Really, this whole enterprise is a great big waste of Key Huy Quan, and that is a bummer.

Finally, Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DuBose have zero chemistry. Not a drop. So there's that.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:52 AM on March 11 [5 favorites]

darn

you probably saved me from trying to watch an unbearably meh film, but the image of the Grinch retreating back up to his lair above Whoville after successfully ruining another Christmas is hard to shake

you're a mean one, Mr. DOT
posted by ginger.beef at 11:05 AM on March 11

It's as if the Valentine's Day industrial complex decided to force this movie to be made, and the poor sods making it had about a third of a script and just tacked on whatever came to mind. Poet-enforcer wins the heart of the assistant? Sure why not. Head fake at a C plot involving one of the henchmen's never-onscreen wife? Uh huh. Marshawn Lynch actually saying the words "beast mode" at one point? Why would anyone cringe?

You'd think David Leitch being a producer on this thing would have given him the opportunity to explain why the RC Cola version of Tangerine and Lemon from Bullet Train wasn't working but I guess he didn't bother.

I want to live in the alternate timeline where Quan hasn't been bullied by the Hollywood casting machine and felt like he had the latitude to say no to this.
posted by axiom at 11:08 AM on March 11

I got suspicious when the advertising was well ahead of the release: that makes sense if the marketers want to leave people with a vague sense of a movie, but few details, so that when it finally comes out they have an ill-defined memory that tricks some of them into buying tickets.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:02 PM on March 11

Aw crud....

Well, Ke does have one intriguing-sounding thing coming up (a film where he plays a serial killer who's toying with his latest victim, but the story is told from the perspective of his dog). Until then I'mma just going to watch his puppy interview again I guess.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 PM on March 11

The silliness is highly miscalibrated. Should have leaned all in or just left it out - instead, it's just tepid all around.

Oddly it felt like a lot of the violence was sanded down, yet it's juxtaposed against finger-taking and really really bloody knife fights.

zero chemistry. Not a drop.

Pretty much like Jet Li and Aaliyah in Romeo Must Die and Chow Yun Fat and Mira Sorvino in The Replacement Killers then. Chow Yun Fat was a romcom lead before John Woo turned him into an action star so the chops are there. qv. Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The chops are there on the guys' side.
posted by porpoise at 6:59 PM on March 11

Bob Odenkirk's character in that movie was sick in his soul with violence, and even as we could rock out to him kicking ass, it was a bit like watching a heroin-addicted musician shoot up and then play a rocking show.

Oh, yeah. Definite undertones of someone hitting the spike after being clean for years.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:13 AM on March 12

the Milwaukee suburbs

Played by Winnipeg!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:42 AM on March 12

Played by Winnipeg!

Well, they never said it was an inner suburb
posted by easy ice at 8:26 PM on March 12

Finally, Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DuBose have zero chemistry. Not a drop. So there's that.

So much this. It was a black hole of chemistry, which is a shame because both actors are fine. They should have cast someone more age-appropriate for DeBose's role.
posted by jimw at 12:58 PM on March 16