Love Hurts (2025)
With a running time of 83 minutes and almost entirely made up of brutal choreographed fight scenes, this barely qualifies as a movie......
It functions as a first starring vehicle for Ke Huy Quan, who managed to snag a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, as he surfed along that regretful tidal wave of awards bestowed on "Everything Everywhere All At Once"......(one of those films that now makes Academy voters shake their heads in disbelief, muttering "What the hell were we thinking?"
Quan's also still coasting on the good will nostalgia he generated by playing Harrison Ford's kung-fu-kid sidekick in 'Temple Of Doom' and one of the goonies.
'Love Hurts' is mainly designed to showcase Quan and the supporting cast in spectacular kick 'n punch-ups reminiscent of Jackie Chan's intricate, Buster Keaton-like fights in all his films.
In that regard, the film does well enough. Everyone who loves those slapstick-y but punishing Chan brawls will enjoy a full dose of 'em here.
But anyone in search of an actual movie that connects and justifies all this non-stop pummeling......forget it. The filmmakers just assumed you didn't need much of storyline to kick off the kicking.....
Quan's a happy-go-lucky successful real estate agent, whose violent past as a hitman for his gangster brother comes back whack him in the head big time. It seems a fellow partner-in-old-crimes (Ariana DeBose) has literally crawled out the grave that Quan supposedly assured his brother he put her in. (Big Bro wrongfully accused her of swiping cash that was, unknown to him, stolen by his own thugs who framed her.)
As a gesture of kindness, empathy and good fellowship, we'll not bore you to tears describing the load of various hit-people who come after Quan, thinking he's hiding DeBose. Amidst all the Kung Fu Karnage, furniture, heads and assorted bones are smashed with abandon. Whoopity-doo.
The 'Kill Bill' Tarantino mixture of quirky characters, quirky dialogue and extreme melees are way, way beyond the skill set of the filmmakers who cobbled together this little nothing of a movie.
But in the interest of fairness, we'll give them credit for one humorous idea.......casting 'Property Brother' Drew Scott as Quan's real estate rival. Not that they do anything especially funny with him, unless you count......(ah, that would involve a spoiler, which we'll let lay in case there's a rare soul who'd want to subject themselves to sitting through this negligible train wreck.
1 star (*). Except for hardcore action addicts who don't need a movie to go with their fights, a waste of time for everyone else.
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