On paper, Love Hurts sounds terrific: A martial arts action movie directed by a former stunt coordinator, starring a beloved actor in the midst of a triumphant career renaissance. It’s a winning formula! It’s in fact the formula created by John Wick, the movie directed by Keanu Reeves’ former stunt double and which singlehandedly revived Reeves’ waning career. And it’s a formula that many, many John Wick knockoffs have tried to recreate, mostly to failed effect. Sadly, Love Hurts is just another one of those lackluster, borderline embarrassing, failed John Wick knockoffs.
Real estate agent Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) might just be the closest a human being can be to a walking ray of sunshine. He’s unfailingly cheery, even in the wake of his assistant Ashley’s (Lio Tipton) latest depressed phone call, and even as he discovers every one of his billboards around town has had graffiti drawn all over his face. But his face finally drops when he receives a strange anonymous Valentine’s Day card declaring, “I’m back,” before he steps into his office and receives a knockout punch to the face. He wakes up with a knife in his hand and a former cohort (Mustafa Shakir) in his face, demanding he tell him where Rose (Ariana Debose) is. It turns out, as we learn in frighteningly rapid exposition, that Marvin is a former hitman who helped Rose fake her demise after she became the target of his gangster brother, Knuckles (Daniel Wu). As Marvin desperately tries to keep a grip on the simple new life he’s made for himself, he’s besieged by more assassins sent by Knuckles, along with Rose herself, who is determined to bring Marvin back to his old, hardened self.
