Love Hurts

Love Hurts has a great idea that's poorly executed.

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Scott's Self-Indulgent Movie Podcast · Episode 993: Love Hurts

A deep dive into post-Oscar careers can be...depressing. Not because everyone who wins an Oscar falls off the face of the earth, but because too often an Oscar-win is followed up by what I'll nicely call the "paycheck jobs." Or put another way, the jobs said actor likely wasn't being offered before because they weren't deemed in demand or seen as a serious actor. So if you weren't getting offers for superhero movies, voice work or leading roles in independent films you can now. That's certainly been the case for the two leads of Love Hurts, Ariana DeBose who went from an ensemble memeber/the bullet in Hamilton to starring getting roles in big budget movies like Kraven the Hunter, Argylle and Wish, and Ke Huy Quan who went from stunt co-ordinator to voice work in animated movies, a Marvel show, and a big Netflix movie The Electric State. Which makes it difficult to report that Love Hurts is a giant misfire that squanders its promising premise.

The Setup

Quan stars as Marvin Gable, a successful local realtor whose cozy life is about to go to hell. Because the woman he supposedly killed for his crime-lord brother, Ariana DeBose's Rose has announced her return. Now Marvin will have to decide whether he wants to go on the run and start over or team-up with Rose and take down his brother for good.

I get why everyone signed up for this movie. On paper this sounds like it should work really well. We've got a funny cast of characters and Ke Huy Quan invoking his inner Jackie Chan as he fends off a bunch of assassins while insisting he doesn't want trouble. And it all more or less taking place during Valentine's day for a romantic angle with a twinge of "you have to stand up to bullies to truly escape them," should work. This should all work.

And basically everyone but the actors failed. And because this irks me so much, I'm going to do a bit of an autopsy on this movie starting with the script.

The Script

There's a lot of problems with this script, but the biggest one is that it has no idea what kind of movie it's trying to be. Generically I think the movie is aiming for an action comedy vibe. That's why we've got assassins with funny gimmicks including Marshawn Lynch literally yelling Beast mode at one point and a number of fight scenes happening in spitting distance of Marvin's job.

But the movie also invites elements of:

• romance between Marvin and Rose that is given little to no attention outside of casual references to Marvin holding a torch for her when they were both criminals and a couple of side comments from Rose about how Marvin looks cute. Which is lethal for a movie called Love Hurts taking place during Valentine's Day. The Fall Guy has more romance in it and it blazes through its romantic elements in favor of over-the-top action comedy conspiracy shenanigans.
• Serious crime and character drama via elements from Quan's criminal brother and an underdeveloped part from Sean Astin.

Astin's part is a great one to dive into to explain what I mean. Astin basically has two scenes in the movie. He has one where he hands Marvin his "Realtor of the Year" plaque talking about how he turned his life around and how much he earned this. And the next one is a pitched confrontation between him and Marvin's brother. In the second one we hear Astin lay out his character's ethos about second chances and giving people an opportunity to change. Could be a really meaningful moment except...who the hell is he to Marvin? He says he's basically Marvin's best friend, but what evidence do we have for that? We don't know which means anything that happens to him can't hit home.

It's extra wild to me because this movie also uses voice-over on a regular basis to establish character histories and dynamics. Maybe a little played out, but it can work if you do it right. Hi I'm Marvin. I used to be an assassin. Three years ago I was supposed to kill a woman. But I didn't. Because I loved her and because I didn't want to be that man anymore. Instead I let her go and went on the run to make a new life. I tried a new job thanks to one man who took a chance one me. And it's been the best three years of my life. I help people find homes. I've got a conzo condo of my own. I'm the happiest I've ever been. I might even win realtor of the year! But I still wonder about Rose...where she is and what she's up to...

They even have him open the movie with voice-over and just skip the backstory part. It's very frustrating. I'm all for lean action movies, especially action comedies. What this movie really needed was ten minutes of quiet so people could just talk and exposition dump in a way that made sense and maintain any semblance of a cohesive tone.

The Direction

The director of this movie is a well-respected stunt fella named Jonathan Eusebio who is making his directorial debut after doing a fair amount of second unit direction for the stunt man/action movie crew led by David Leitch called 87North Productions. And unfortunately you can tell.

Normally the issue for a first-time director making an action movie is the action, which is less of an issue here. It'll get its own section in a spell. 

So how else does directing inexperience stand-out? Tone management for one. If you're making a comedy or a romance you should direct the funny and romantic moments as such. For instance, if you've got two characters who have romantic tension between the two of them you should frame both of them as they see each other. Loving looks from the camera as we watch these characters move towards each other and take each other in. Every moment these two have should be full of tension via performance and camera work.

And maybe two scenes have that? Unfortunately a lot of the scenes that are supposed to have this tension come across as unintentionally funny because they're not being directed like a romantic or romantically tense scene, they're being directed like a B-movie flashback. Also for a movie where Marvin is allegedly in love with Rose...what signs do we have that he feels that way? How does he look at her? What does he like about her? If anything it seems like he wants to be as far away from her as possible. What doe she like about him? 

It's really hard to tell if these two have any screen chemistry because they're each given one tone to work with. Quan is asked to be put upon and DeBose is an absolute wild card. Nothing else. And they're both capable of so much more.

The Action

Here's what kills me about the action in this movie. A lot of it, in theory, is really good. Quan is a seasoned stunt performer who's far more capable of performing his own action than the average actor and the setup of each scene being him trying and failing to avoid a beating while delivering non lethal blows to his opponents is pure Jackie Chan fun. And the use environments and a wide array of weapons to give the emphasis on hand to hand combat variety.

There's a number of scenes that work whether it's a unique camera angle or a fun weapon.

So what's missing?

Hello editing my old friend.

I've talked a lot in the past about editing in action movies and in particular how quick editing in action scenes can either enhance or take away from an individual scene. Inexperienced action filmmakers use editing as a means of making a scene feel intense to hide the fact that they didn't really stage an exciting fight. Old school action filmmakers like to do everything in camera in wide shots. And new school action editors try a bit of both to enhance the look and feel of an individual punch.

And if you're going to go for the combo route, you need to maintain visual continuity in some way.

In Fury Road they accomplished this by ensuring that the action focal point was always in the center so a quick cut from one location or character to another never broke the audience's experience.

The visual continuity in the edits for Love Hurts are all over the damn place. In one scene Quan's Marvin is picked up and about to be thrown. And in the process of him being picked up and thrown we have about four cuts to hide wires and stunt doubles that all view the action from a different angle. For one Marvin is centered, then he's to the side, then centered again, then the other side of the frame. 

And while the stunts themselves and the action scene is ok, this kills the flow and feel of the scene. I also don't know if this movie understands the action movie shorthand it's using even with sound effects. Like, if you shoot a guy take a shot to the dome and the sound effect is a crack. That dude is dead. Neck snapped. Done. Unless we need that guy for another fight scene so he's just sleeping. It's so strange how many basic concepts or action movie language iaremistranslated here.

There's also a giant missed opportunity for a build-up throughout the movie.

So the standard Jackie Chan movie arc is that he spends the lion's share of the movie fighting to survive. He fends off the people who want to give him trouble as he tells them he doesn't want trouble. They don't listen and maybe they take a ladder to the face. But in almost every Jackie Chan movie there's a point at the end where Jackie has had enough. He's done being nice and he's going to actually square up and take these dudes down.

That's the arc Love Hurts is building to. That Marvin is going to embrace this monster one last time to set himself and his lady love free. So when one guy tries to take him, he appears to one shot kill him (but who knows) by snapping his neck. Ok let's see this monster go.

Standard fight scene follows. An impressive staged and performed fight scene, but nothing close to the brutality we've been promised for the entire movie.

It's a let down that feels like a metaphor for the entire movie.

A great idea that fails to deliver on its promise.