lame

Ke Huy Quan has it in him to be one of the most likable action stars working today- possibly even having the crossover appeal of a true physical comedian on par with Jackie Chan. But if he’s going to have that kind of career, he maybe should pick projects outside of America, or at least better than “Love Hurts”.


This is another “John Wick” knock-off and those are starting to get a little stale already. How many times are you going to tell the same joke of a mild mannered something or other who’s really an ass-kicking something or other before we’ve seen it too many times? But this movie also has bigger problems. It’s consistently at odds with itself. It tries to be goofy but also gritty, it wants to be a Valentine’s day programmer but its DOA in the love department, and it wants to be a martial arts actioner but comes off like a meager offering even in that.


It stars Quan as Marvin Gable, a mild mannered realtor who is not so shocked when several trained killers begin to show up at his office, all claiming to be sent by his brother (Daniel Wu), though some of the more confusing aspects of the plot is that they’re broken off into several groups who seem to be working at cross purposes.


Marvin was supposed to kill someone named Rosie (Arianna DeBosse) a long time ago but instead he let her go and disappeared himself as well. But now she’s back for some reason and the mob boss brother is also aware of this and so we have a big long chase between Marvin, all these hired goons, and Rosie herself.


As he showed in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, Quan contains a lot of physical agility and from just a visceral standpoint, his fights are very watchable, including ones where he’s slammed, stabbed, or thrown into a refrigerator. The first fight here is a real knock-out, drag-out one and it leaves us anticipating more. Unfortunately we have to wait til the finale for the next one and even that seems like a come down from the first.


Maybe because there’s no real investment in anything these characters do. Quan is more fun when he’s playing this genial, always smiling, always energetically welcoming realtor. Once the film turns him into John Wick 2.0, he then starts wearing all black suits and acting deadly serious and this is not the Quan we fell in love with. The movie gives him few opportunities to keep adopting the realtor character for laughs and it suffocates his comic energy.


Debosse is given even less to do. She’s proven charming in other movies but here so much of the Marvin-Rosie relationship gets played in either flashbacks or with the two doing more thinking, which the film portrays in voice over narration, than any actual scenes that deepen the relationship of the characters much.


Of what few laughs the film actually has come from Mustafa Shakir, playing a hitman who moonlights as a sensitive poet who writes about dancing bears, and Marshawn Lynch who continuously creates humor out of nothing. Everyone else, including poor Sean Astin, is stuck in a movie that too often relies on dull shoot-outs in place of a punchline and glibness in place of real characters. This is a very short 83 minute film, but even in that, it winds up feeling longer than it really needs to be.


If anyone's interested, I reviewed the movie on my youtube channel. Appreciate any feedback. Trying to improve -https://youtu.be/Ys02CrZZpHo