On February 6, the Ukrainian box office launched the comedy action film «Love Hurts». «This little guy fights like a ninja and jumps like a spider monkey!» — this is how one of the villains characterized the protagonist in the trailer. This time, the Jackie Chan on the screen is played by Ki Hui Kwan, whom you may have seen as a child in the adventure hits «Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom» (1984) and «The Goonies» (1985). As well as in the acclaimed fantastic action film «Everything Everywhere All at Once» (2022) and the second season of the «Loki».» (2023). In the review below, we tell you how exciting the local stunts look and what the love is for.
Pluses:
some well-staged and filmed battle scenes; some really funny jokes;
Minuses:
The problem is when the film switches between humor and action and tries to put everything together into a single story because then the dynamics sags, making the viewer bored for a long time;
«Love Hurts»
Genre comedy action movie
Director Jonathan Eusebio
Starring Kee Hui Kwan, Ariana Debose, Mustafa Jaqir, Lio Tipton, Daniel Wu, Cam Gigandet, Sean Astin, Reese Derby, Stephanie Sy, Adam Hertig
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
Marvin Gable is a very successful real estate agent who loves what he does. He’s the kind of friendly guy who rides his bike to work and bakes heart-shaped cookies on Valentine’s Day to treat his colleagues to. One day, Marvin is visited by a black thug with obviously bad intentions, but the seemingly innocent white-collar worker manages to fight back against the hostile bull and literally put him to sleep.
Meanwhile, two more thugs are waiting for Marvin outside, and you might wonder why such an unassuming man would be hunted by criminal elements. The fact is that Marvin is a former killer who worked for his brother, nicknamed Knuckles, but decided to leave this disastrous business and start from scratch, so to speak, to feel like a normal person. But the ghosts of the past, represented by a seductive woman and his former boss, have already caught up with the unfortunate realtor and are planning to bill him for yesterday’s sins and today’s quiet life.
The film’s director, Jonathan Eusebio, has worked as a stunt coordinator for his entire career, and his filmography in this field is replete with several different films — from Marvel blockbusters to conventionally more down-to-earth action movies like «John Wick» or last year’s «The Fall Guy». «Love Hurts» — is Eusebio’s first attempt at directing, backed by David Leitch’s production support, and it is, I must say, very striking.
Despite a promising and dynamic beginning, the plot later slides into boring and useless character flailing, which can hardly be called exciting. The situation is not much helped by the humorous attempts, which clearly hint that you should relax and have fun. But it’s not so easy to do because the movie doesn’t offer too many reasons for good entertainment.
The problem is not even that the battle scenes are somehow connected by a vague story, but that there are one, two, three, and then the end of the line of those far from outstanding battle scenes.
The absence of a coherent plot in a comedy action movie, which was made by stuntmen and stunt coordinators, is not a sin if the crude script is offset by quality jokes and, most importantly, cool action scenes. With these indicators, the film is not all right, and it’s more about quantity than quality. The space that is not occupied by jokes or fights (which is about half of the running time), the filmmakers have nothing to fill it with. And so it turns out that the viewer has to be bored.
At the same time, the poetic storyline of Marvin’s assistant and the black mercenary who tried to kill him at the beginning has a much better chance of amusing the audience than the main character’s arch. Still, the story of a settled killer who hangs his guns with silencers on a nail is played out quite weakly here.
Let’s leave aside the fact that Hui Kwan’s character is a so-so disguise when there are advertisements with his face on almost every bus stop. And even the caricatured one Bruce Willis ala ex-hitman Jimmy «The Tulip» Tudeski in «The Whole Ten Yards» (2004) as a diligent housewife in a cute apron and kigurumi slippers was funnier. And this, for a moment, is a movie that failed miserably at the box office and was destroyed by critics.
Matthew Perry wrote the following in his memoir «Friends, Lovers, and Big Trouble»: «If “The Whole Nine Yards” was the beginning of my stellar movie career, “The Whole Ten Yards” was the end». In this case, the memorable expression «nine or ten» takes on an ominous context.
But anyway, in «Love Hurts», Ki Hui Kwan cosplays Jackie Chan, not the star of «Die Hard», but Jackie Chan, although the cosplay is not very enthusiastic. The battles are done at the proper level, and the name «My Bloody Valentine» comes to mind for a reason, but they are not outstanding — everything here looks simple, not inventive, without any tricky revelations.
In addition, the local showdown is imbued with the sweet vibe of Valentine’s Day, because the whole mess started because of love. A burned-out real estate company employee can fall in love, as can a ruthless killer with dangerous blades. Here and there, hearts flutter on the screen, and in the climax, when the batch reaches its climax, the frame is filled with a pleasant neon light.
Spelling error report
The following text will be sent to our editors: