You have to balance your expectations when you see a trailer or synopsis of a film starring two Academy Award winners. Such as Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose in the film Love Hurts. Just because there are two fantastic actors in something doesn’t mean it’s great. Just fine is more like what I’d describe this action/ adventure rom-com as. Sometimes, things aren’t as good as you’d expect. That is a fact. It’s just disappointing because I was looking forward to seeing these two together in this.

Ke Huy Quan plays Marvin Gable, a real estate agent. He loves his job and is happy with his life. When he starts to notice signs that a passed love Rose (Ariana DeBose) has returned from the dead, he starts to get worried. After being attacked by a huge hitman played by Mustafa Shakir, he knows something bad is happening around him. He must rely on his skills from a past life to help himself survive.

Part of the marketing campaign for this film says its from the producers of Nobody and Violent Night. When I saw that, I was intrigued. Jonathan Eusebio, the director, was trying to capture the vibe of those two films.  To some extent, he did capture the vibe of those films and other action adventure films. On another level, the script, by Matthew Murray,  Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore, didn’t capture what I wanted from this story at all. 

Part of the fun of this movie is the fight sequences. Like classic martial arts films, the scenes involve everyday average things in whatever room or dwelling they take place in. Two particularly come to mind are an office fight scene in Quan’s character’s business. His office is destroyed by himself and Shakir’s character. Everything from vass’s, pictures on the wall, and things on the desk are used to cause pain and misery to the other involved in the fight. This is just the beginning of the crazy fight sequences in the film, though.

The other part of this movie I loved was the soundtrack, which was full of classic love songs we all should remember from the past. One such as “Its All Coming Back To Me Now” from Celine Dion during the trailer. The second big fight scene between Quan, Marshawn Lynch, yes, that Lynch the ex-NFL football player who played for the Seattle Seahawks among others, and Andre Eriksen’s character, two thugs who work for Quan’s character’s brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu) has one song I loved, “You’re The First, The Last My Everything” by Barry White. It was perfectly used in this sequence in the movie. I loved it.

The  key part of the movie that I felt didn’t live up to my expectations the most was the relationship between Quan and Dabose’s characters. There was a throughline in the plot where  Quan’s character is smitten with DeBose’s character, and I don’t think she feels the same way as  him. She’s quite younger than him in reality. There is a twenty year age difference between the pair. That’s a bit creepy for him to be in love with a woman that young. Maybe it’s just me, though. Age is just a number, though, I guess from what people say. I just didn’t feel that these two had the chemistry on screen that the plot and director would want us to believe. I did like both of their characters separately, though.

Love Hurts is a fun movie that has a few pretty amazing fight scenes, one in an office, a house, and a nightclub. The cast, which I didn’t entirely get into in this review, was pretty entertaining. Lynch was hilarious, but Quan and DeBose were the two I was looking forward to the most, and they were enjoyable to watch for the most part. My favorite part of the film was the soundtrack, which was mixed in with the fight scenes. The music in the movie made those sequences that much more entertaining. All in all, this is going to be a throw-away action rom-com, but I liked it for the most part.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen