“Love Hurts” is a fast-paced darkly comic martial-arts movie, where just about every major character gets shot, stabbed or pummeled repeatedly. But this is a Valentine’s Day flick, set on February 14.
Ke Huy Quan plays Marvin Gable, a nerdy-looking but successful realtor in Milwaukee — the kind of guy who bakes Valentine’s cookies for his staff and sincerely believes in his Ned Flanders-like slogan, “I Want a Home For You!”
But behind his office door, a hulking hitman is waiting to drag him back into his old life, when Marvin was the ace executioner for his gang-boss brother Knuckles, real name Alvin (played by Daniel Wu.)
A renegade associate of the gang, Rose (played by Ariana DeBose) has resurfaced. This is fatally embarrassing for Marvin, who was assigned to bury her in a quarry. Instead, smitten with Rose, he told her to disappear.
Now, Knuckles’ mob is after them both, and Marvin has to stay alive while carrying on his normal workday. How do you sell off a model suburban split-level to a nice young couple before it gets turned into a war zone?
Jonathan Eusebio, directing his first film here, has a background as a stunt coordinator and second-unit director, so he’s qualified to bring off the furious fight scenes, where the weapons range from automatic weapons and daggers to plastic straws and ticky-tacky kitchen furnishings.
But the director also lets the funny, romantic side of the story breathe. The oddly likable henchmen trying to kill Marvin include a guy who writes dark, sensitive poetry; and another hood pondering his relationship issues.
Ke Huy Quan came to fame in the 80’s as one of the Goonies and a sidekick to Indiana Jones. In recent years, he survived the Curse of the Child Star after he showed off his martial-arts skills and won a Supporting Actor Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Here, he looks like a dorky but dangerous relative to Jackie Chan.
Ariana DeBose, his sultry, tough leading lady, also has a supporting Oscar, for the re-make of “West Side Story.” Among others in the cast, Quan has a reunion with his old Goonies co-star Sean Astin, and there’s a plot twist which shows his appearance is not just nostalgia.
The basic plot here, of a worm who turns out to be a wolf, is familiar. But in the end, I’m giving four kick-ass bouquets out of five to “Love Hurts.”
