LOVE HURTS: A Blood-Soaked Valentine’s Day Slog

The everyman-turned-secret-assassin action movie is a well-worn genre in 2025. The kind of movie that focuses on an average Joe with a mysterious past that eventually leads to a blood-soaked trail of bodies. John Wick re-popularized the genre, Atomic Blonde and The Equalizer capitalized on it, Nobody flanderized it, and Wrath Of Man proved that people were tired of it.

And then, a whopping 9 years later, we have Love Hurts. With a few cosmetic spins and the affable charm of lead actor Ke Huy Quan, 87North Productions tried to prove there was still life in the genre that pundits once called “the rebirth of quality action movies”. Unfortunately, the ensuing action-comedy about a lovelorn former assassin-turned-realtor proved a cluttered mess. Stilted writing, rushed pacing, and the lack of a distinct directorial eye led Love Hurts to wither away on Valentine’s Day weekend.

Where did it all go wrong? Let’s review:

A Valentine’s Day Massacre

Chipper real estate agent Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) is a pillar of the local community and a successful businessman. But despite a positive exterior, Gable hides a dark past: he was once an assassin for the local mob run by his estranged brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu).

On Valentine’s Day, Gable’s past suddenly returns to haunt him in the form of Rose (Ariana Debose), the mob’s lawyer who Gable was assigned to kill for double-crossing them. However, he secretly let her go due to his love for her. Rose, unwilling to live her life in hiding, returns to town and intends to take down Knuckles once and for all.

With Rose’s reappearance, Gable’s past catches up with him in the form of several assassins (Mustafa Shakir, Marshawn Lynch, Andrew Eriksen), one of whom falls in love with Gable’s cynical assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton). With no other choice, Gable is forced to embark on a blood-soaked mission of revenge to reclaim the life he fought so hard to cultivate. But with Rose’s help, he soon realizes that running away from his past is no way to live, and the two team up to eliminate Knuckles once and for all.

Sugary & Sweet, But Hard to Swallow

Love Hurts is a movie so dedicated to being a thrill ride that it loses sight of itself. At barely 83 minutes, the film positively zips by, rushing through character development at light-speed in an effort to cram in as much action as possible. Personally, an all-killer-no-filler approach to these action films can sometimes work. After all, the conceit of an everyman plowing through goons like Rambo is inherently ridiculous. It makes sense to gloss over character-based  drama when the core audience only wants action.

But here, Love Hurts tries to have their cake and eat it too. With more subplots and Valentine’s Day tie-ins than one can count, Love Hurts feels supremely overstuffed. Characters each have their own subplot condensed to just a few lines, flanderizing them to the point where they feel less like people and more like two-dimensional caricatures. The hurried editing doesn’t help matters. With boatloads of ADR, stuttered editing, and ham-fisted voiceover explaining characters’ emotional beats, Love Hurts feels chopped down past its bare bones. Like the holiday itself, it feels overly commercialized in an attempt to hit the widest possible audience, and comes across as a corporate shell of unoriginality.

First-time director Jonathan Eusebio does a serviceable job with 87North’s trademark stylized action, but gets lost in the weeds of his own storytelling. Storyline machinations are thrown at the audience too quickly, little more than setups for action scenes. Motivations turn on a dime, yet the film falls short of being cartoony enough to let audiences go along with the nonsense. The film intersperses serious moments and comedy too rapidly, and the result is a film with nothing concrete to offer.

By the time the climax arrives, much of the film’s side plots have quietly been forgotten about, leaving viewers with little to grab onto emotionally. The final battle, ending in a one-on-one battle between Gable and Knuckles, feels tamped down and muted in comparison to the chaos of the film’s first half. In an attempt to imbue the finale with gravitas, Eusebio instead ends the film on an underwhelming half-baked note.

Quan’s Performance Is The Cherry On Top

The saving grace of the film is Ke Huy Quan. Blending his real-life puppy-dog personality and experience in Hong Kong action cinema, Quan manages to provide a new spin on the everyman action star with the affably sweet Marvin Gable. Following his acclaimed performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Quan opts for a sillier approach here, leaning into Gable’s pure heart and yearning for peace. Unfortunately, the film’s writing leaves him with little to anchor the character besides brief flashback scenes, and the result is a performance too reminiscent of a Jackie Chan ripoff to succeed as a three-dimensional lead. But, damn, Quan’s just so likable he carries the film to a legacy beyond the bargain bin it rightfully belongs in.

An everyman protagonist succeeds on the dichotomy of his dual existences. Films that inspired Love Hurts (including some from the same production company) find their emotional anchor from the everyman’s desire to sever his past from his present. Love Hurts doesn’t go deep enough into either the past or the present, therefore giving its actors nothing to work with.

The rest of the cast, despite this, gamely parry Quan’s on-screen presence. Co-star Debose plays the femme fatale perfectly with a dash of sociopathy. Although she and Quan have hilariously little romantic chemstry, she remains eminently watchable and holds her own in the action scenes. Lynch (king of the bemused reaction shot) shakes off his lack of acting skills in a surprise turn as the assassin with a heart of gold. The bit players are hilarious, ranging from self-serious to self-aware, but the standout is Sean Astin in a guest turn as Gable’s mentor. Riffing on a southern tycoon stereotype, Astin is the only performer able to transcend parody and grasp at something deeper.

Conclusion

Love Hurts stepped into the public as the last gasp of a genre that audiences have gotten bored with. The Valentine’s Day setting could have been a fun twist, but the film has no space to delve into the thematic resonance of love beyond a few subplots, leaving any uniqueness to be nothing more than window-dressing.

On paper, this film should have been a blast. It had all the tools to become a new pulp comedy classic. But, in lieu of a distinct style, the film simply opted to throw its ingredients into a blender and plop it onto a plate. And, surprise, the result was an underwhelming mess.

Love Hurts is still worth a watch, if only for Quan’s tour-de-force performance. A perpetually underutilized actor, Hollywood executives should be taking notice of Quan’s ability to be the emotional center of a large-scale film.

But beyond that, it’s unlikely Love Hurts will be remembered as anything more than a failed Valentine’s Day night out.

Love Hurts is now playing in theatres nationwide.