Love Hurts, Starring Ke Huy Quan, Doesn't Hit Hard Enough

Few in Hollywood boast a life story as extraordinary as that of Ke Huy Quan. A child refugee of the Vietnam War, he was plucked from obscurity at age 13 by Steven Spielberg to play Indiana Jones' sidekick in Temple of Doom. After other high-profile roles in films like The Goonies and Encino Man, his acting career stalled out. He went to film school and settled into a rather enviable career behind the scenes in the U.S. and Greater China, working with the likes of Corey Yuen and Wong Kar-Wai. It took decades for him to finally find his way back in front of the camera in Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film that gave him an instant profile as a "secretly badass awkward dad" type, as well as an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

That persona animates Love Hurts, the latest film from 87North, the action-focused production house behind the John Wick series and last year's The Fall Guy. Quan stars as Marvin Gable, an affable, non-threatening Milwaukee realtor who's a little too enthusiastic about his rather mundane life of biking to work, baking cookies, and helping people find their dream homes. His chipper facade hides a dark past: In another life, he was a hitman, the attack dog of his gangster brother "Knuckles" (Daniel Wu), though it's unclear whether Marvin is in hiding or simply left the underworld voluntarily.

One fateful day — Valentine's Day, as it turns out — his past comes roaring back with a vengeance. Rose (Ariana DeBose), a femme fatale former associate he was ordered to kill but spared instead, has returned to seek payback on the gangsters who tried to do her in. Her incursion threatens to disrupt Marvin's cozy new life, not least of all because the assassins who are after her come looking for him first.

Many elements of the film fall flat. Rose is supposed to serve as a long-lost paramour that Marvin let slip through his fingers, but Quan and DeBose have no chemistry, so the pairing fails to convince. Both Marvin and Rose also provide narration, little of which provides any insight. There are also plot holes — why do they both choose to hide out in the same city where the gangsters operate? Plus, the Valentine's Day premise feels forced — it's a means to an end to give the film a seasonal marketing hook. It also leads to pointless and distracting plotting surrounding Knuckles' colorfully-drawn henchmen. Do we really need to see "King" (Marshawn Lynch) counsel his partner Otis (André Eriksen) through his relationship troubles, or watch "Raven" (Mustafa Shakir), a knife-wielding badass who attacks Marvin in his office, fall for Marvin's dissatisfied employee Ashley (Lio Tipton)?
The characterization of these side players feels shallow, too, with symbolic clothing and undercooked personalities. We're supposed to glean from Ashley's septum piercing, for instance, that she's an artistic type who hates her boring job. Raven's name is a too-obvious reference to a poem every American knows from high school. And then there's Quan's Goonies castmate Sean Astin playing Marvin's ten-gallon-hat-wearing boss Cliff Cussick, the man who supposedly lifted him out of his dark past and into polite society. The film takes only two scenes to try and convince us of their bond, which is just enough screentime for Cliff to spout silly, Terrence Malick-esque truisms ("I believe in absolution") in a corny Southern drawl. These details may have fit better if the film, a brisk 83 minutes, were just a bit longer, or more surreal — Cliff feels like a David Lynch character who wandered onto the wrong set, for instance.

All of this frustrates because it detracts from the great action scenes in the film. 87North has built a mini-empire out of stylized action filmmaking, and this movie, the directorial debut of John Wick stunt coordinator Jonathan Eusebio, does not disappoint in that department. The camera moves acrobatically, jerking to follow particularly hard hits or watching from above as Marvin skillfully dispatches a group of gangsters with fluid knifework. The fight scenes are claustrophobic and brutal, with combatants wrecking small rooms and brawling in tight spaces. One set-piece sees Marvin and Rose battle it out in Knuckles' neon-lit boba tea shop lair; others in Marvin's for-sale properties feature appliances pulled from the walls and fences comedically scaled. Eusebio knows enough to draw on Quan's experience coordinating stunts in the Hong Kong industry, so there are plenty of martial arts hits and clever, Jackie Chan-esque uses of unconventional weapons — cookie cutters, office supplies, and other household paraphernalia.

I can easily see Quan doing more of this type of everyman-action-hero work and becoming a sort of late-blooming American successor to Jackie Chan. One of the sad ironies of his career is that he was drummed out of Hollywood just before American audiences embraced Hong Kong action stars like Chan, Jet Lee, and Michelle Yeoh, but at age 53 he equips himself quite well. It would be thrilling to see Quan, whose biography is the kind of never-give-up tale that used to animate the dreams of Hollywood hopefuls, emerge as a new leading man in the action scene. He has the experience and the likability to get it done, but he needs better material than this. What hurts the most about Love Hurts is the way it squanders a star that should have been shining for much longer.

Love Hurts. Starring Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, and Daniel Wu. Written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore. Directed by Jonathan Eusebio. 83 minutes. Rated R. Opens Friday, February 7.