Love Hurts 2025 Movie Review
“Hiding ain’t Living” is written on the greeting card that Marvin Gable, played by Ke Huy Quan , receives. He has just reached a milestone in his career as a real estate agent when he is dragged back into his old life as, as we already know from the trailer, a professional killer. What follows is what you would expect from director Jonathan Eusebio, who has previously only done stunts: stunts, stunts, stunts, as Marvin begins to reactivate his past.
And the stunts are really good. The choreography is sophisticated, the kicks, punches, cuts and stabs go deep and are surprisingly bloody considering the fact that this is a Valentine’s Day film being marketed as a romantic action comedy. The camera movements and settings are sometimes really creative and dynamic, so that you get shaken up with the characters who are breaking their bones in an impressively beautifully photographed setting.
But these characters are little more than their broken bones. Even the protagonist remains pale, his character development is barely noticeable and you can see his end coming miles away. That’s a shame because he has moments where he shows himself vulnerable and it works well. Other characters are simply underdeveloped, basically all of them except Ariana DeBose ‘s character Rose and maybe Marvin’s brother Alvin, played by Daniel Wu . But one thing is for sure, they can all fight.
Now Ke Huy Quan is known not only as a good fighter, but also as a man with a sense of comedic timing. And that is not unimportant in a romantic action comedy. The action is often interrupted by slapstick, which takes away its harshness and relevance, but at the same time this slapstick often works well on its own. Love Hurts is certainly not a clever, subtle comedy, but alongside many silly and superfluous jokes, there are also numerous moments that are really funny.
The film as a whole is nice to look at and sounds powerful and vital, but its rhythm often seems unbalanced. Sometimes you wish a scene was longer, sometimes shorter, sometimes you would like to delve deeper into the characters’ emotions or just ignore them completely in order to see more of the great action. But as it is, it doesn’t seem quite right. Overall, Love Hurts remains mediocre at a high level.
