Love Hurts (2025): A Review (Review #1935)

 

LOVE HURTS

Are they proud of this? Did the people involved in Love Hurts, the first 2025 film that I reviewed, look at the final product and say, "this is something people will love"? Maybe the film's director Jonathan Eusebio and screenwriters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore thought that they had a potential franchise in Love Hurts. The film is bizarre but not in a good way. Confused, at times illogical and boring, Love Hurts manages to not justify its surprisingly short runtime.

Mild-mannered Milwaukee realtor Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) loves his job, which is more than what his Frontier Realty assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) can say. Things are looking up for everyone in the office as they get ready for an office Valentine's Day party until Marvin gets a curious Valentine card. 

He soon realizes that the card is from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a woman from his past life as a hitman. Marvin had been ordered to kill Rose by his brother Alvin also known as Knuckles (Daniel Wu). Knuckles had been skimming millions from the Russian mob, and Rose had taken the fall for the misappropriation of funds. However, Marvin let her go and urged her to leave, his unrequited love for Rose motivating him to leave his old life and embrace his new identity while keeping his old name.

Soon, it becomes a free-for-all as to who will get Rose and/or Marvin. Marvin is attacked by a hitman known as The Raven (Mustafa Shakir), who has a fondness for knives and poetry. Later, the bickering, bumbling duo of Otis (Andre Eriksen) and King (Marshawn "Beastmode" Lynch) are also after Marvin. Marvin himself is captured by Rose, who pushes him to return to his old master assassin days to help her expose the real thief who double crossed her. That would be Merlo (Cam Gigandet), Knuckles' right-hand man who himself has been skimming from Alvin. 

Marvin and Rose eventually are forced to join forces, as are Marvin and The Raven against Otis and King. Things get more complicated as after reading The Raven's downbeat poetry, Ashley has fallen in love with Raven and vice versa. Will the Regional Realtor of the Year winner Marvin be able to save Rose and defeat all the hitmen sent after him? Who will win in a Marvin and Alvin battle royale?

I want to believe that somewhere underneath Love Hurts, there is a genuine story of a man forced to deal with his criminal past after embracing a new worldview. Unfortunately, Love Hurts bungled the job big-time. I am absolutely astonished that Love Hurts is less than ninety minutes long because as it stands, it already feels rushed and stuffed with bizarre story threads that do not fit.

The entire Ashley-Raven romance is downright insane. First, we the audience would think Raven is dead given the fight between him and Marvin. I was pretty sure that Raven's neck got broken. Second, no one in the crowded office heard this massive battle going on outside of faint muffles. Third, when Ashley stumbles onto Raven's corpse due to hearing his cell phone, we get the idea that he is dead. Fourth, merely reading his death meditation poetry has her falling in love with him, made all the easier due to him suddenly popping up and being very much alive.

Ashley called Marvin to tell him that there is a dead man in his office. I think people watching Love Hurts would presume that Raven is dead. Now, not only is he still alive, but starting a passionate romance with Ashley merely because she "gets" his poetry?

Love Hurts confuses quirky characters with character development. You have the hitman poet. You have the bickering hitmen. You have Sean Astin roaming around as Marvin's mentor Cliff. You even have a brief appearance from Drew Scott, one of the Property Brothers who gets his head blown off. Scott's character is Jeff Zacks, a rival realtor whom Marvin initially suspects of drawing Hitler mustaches on Marvin's ads. 

I figure Scott had a fun time being in a movie. I did not recognize Drew Scott in Jeff Zacks' ads as I have the vaguest idea of what the Property Brothers franchise is. I have never cared to know of or about the Scott twins or their home hijinks. His appearance here is thoroughly pointless, unless the point was to inflate Drew Scott's ego.

Similarly, Sean Astin is there for no real reason whatsoever save perhaps for an informal Goonies reunion. The film spends much time attempting to give the audience action pieces but never bothers to build that bond between Cliff and Marvin. As such, both the idea that Cliff and Marvin consider each other brothers and Cliff's rather gruesome, almost sadistic, death do not hit the way Love Hurts thinks that it would.

While Cliff's killing is awful, as is Jeff's, the true sadist is Rose, our presumed vixen and love interest. She cuts off the finger of Kippy (Rhys Darby), one of Merlo's partners, and later pulls some of his teeth, albeit accidentally when she takes the duct tape off. I want to say Quan tried to make Love Hurts work, attempting to balance the cheerful Marvin with the master assassin.

It did not work. The jumbled action sequences did not help, with them either attempting to slip into downright goofiness or in overhead shots that took you out of the film.

While my sense is that Quan made an effort to elevate Love Hurts, there was no such efforts from his fellow Oscar winner DeBose. Her efforts to play Rose in any way: funny, sexy, femme fatale or shrewd operator, all failed. I do not know if she even tried or tried too hard. It just came across as bad.

Gigandet has always been bad at acting, so Love Hurts is no different. It is odd that the best performance came from someone who billed himself in part as "Beastmode". Lynch, while not a serious actor, at least made Love Hurts tolerable to watch as he attempted to make King a comic villain. 

I do not know what 2025 will hold in terms of film. I do not know if we will have films that dwarf Love Hurts for awfulness. I think that despite it coming out in February, more than one person will have Love Hurts among their worst films of the year.

DECISION: F