Love Hurts: A painful outcome

Love Hurts (2025) • View trailer

2 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Ke Huy Quan, still fresh from his Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once, can’t be blamed for capitalizing on his renewed 15 minutes of fame.

 

But one could wish he chose his projects more carefully.

 

When Rose (Ariana DeBose) rashly decides to come out of hiding, she hopes to enlist
Marvin (Ke Huy Quan) in her scheme to seek revenge for past events. Alas, Marvin
doesn't wish to wreck the comfortable life he has build ... but will he have a choice?

At its best — and I use that term very loosely — this fitfully amusing guilty pleasure can be regarded as a more vicious nod to Jackie Chan’s chaotic, exploit-the-surroundings martial arts style.

Quan has serious taekwondo chops, having spent his 20-year acting hiatus working as an action/stunt consultant under the tutelage of Hong Kong director/choreographer Corey Yuen. Quan displays all the right moves here, employing everything from office furniture to laptops while handling everything (literally) thrown at him by stunt coordinator Can Aydin.

 

This film’s wafer-thin plot — cobbled together by scripters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore — also gets points for its mordant humor. One baddie fancies himself a poet; a second one can’t figure out how to patch things up with his wife; the Valentine’s Day setting repeatedly comes into play.

 

But stunt coordinator-turned-first-time-director Jonathan Eusebio and his writers break the cardinal rule of such films: Killing innocents isn’t kosher ... and it’s a particularly egregious sin when their demise is accompanied by a slice of gratuitously tasteless gore.

 

Eusebio’s film lurches to an abrupt stop when he so indulges ... and, in the blink of an eye, the fun drains away.

 

Never to return.

 

(The endless F-bombs also don’t help.)

 

Marvin Gable (Quan), a realtor heading his own Milwaukee firm, has achieved considerable success thanks to the savvy care and charm with which he matches prospective buyers with their imagined dream homes. Alas, a crimson envelope shatters his routine on this particular February 14; it’s from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a former partner-in-crime whom he long ago left for dead.

 

But before he can consider the implications of her reappearance, Marvin is attacked by the hulking Raven (Mustafa Shakir); the subsequent skirmish destroys Marvin’s office, the cacophony somehow failing to be noticed by the rest of his staff.

 

Even executive assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) regards the noise behind her boss’ closed door with little more than mild curiosity, but she has an excuse: cynicism and disillusionment with life, exacerbated by the hearts-and-flowers trappings of this contrived “day of love.”

Ghosted: Rather insubstantial

Ghosted (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong action violence, mild sexuality and brief profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This certainly is the epitome of “guilty pleasure.”

 

Were it not for the charismatic screen presence of stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, director Dexter Fletcher’s action/adventure rom-com would be nothing but a case study in formulaic excess.

 

Pinned down by gunfire in the mountainous region of Pakistan's Khyber Pass, Cole
(Chris Evans) and Sadie (Ana de Armas) are about to endure a fate worse than death.
But fear not: A dilapidated and hilariously colorful bus is about to provide escape (of sorts).

Goodness knows, the dialogue — blame Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers — is beyond eye-rollingly lame. And while the premise has promise, the required suspension of disbelief too frequently hits 11, on a 10-point scale.

 

That said…

 

Evans and de Armas are entertaining together, and the dog-nuts plot builds to an inventive — if highly improbable — climax that deserves points for originality. (It does, however, remind me of the final merry-go-round sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, although I’d be very surprised to learn that Reese et al channeled that.)

 

Events begin in Washington, D.C., where Cole Turner (Evans) manages a booth at a lively farmers’ market, selling produce grown at his family ranch just outside the city. He and traveling art curator Sadie Rhodes (de Armas) meet cute over her intended purchase of a house plant from a neighboring stall.

 

This is the film’s worst exchange of so-called flirty banter, and — coming so soon — it bodes ill for whatever follows. But hang in there; things do improve. A bit.

 

Lamentable first impressions lead to a whirlwind day together, after which Sadie departs on her next assignment. Cole, assuming that “magic” has entered his life, texts her during the next several days: at first romantically, then curiously, and finally much too aggressively. All to no avail; Sadie ignores — “ghosts” — him completely.

 

Cole’s subsequent agitation proves quite amusing to his father (Tate Donovan), mother (Amy Sedaris) and particularly younger sister Mattie (Lizze Broadway), who warns him against such “stalkerish” behavior. But Cole doesn’t see it that way, and circumstances give him the means to find Sadie. 

 

He forever misplaces things, and long ago put little trackers on crucial personal items, all of which can be located via his Smart phone. Sadie accidentally departed with his allergy inhaler, which places her — Cole is surprised to learn — in London. 

 

“Go after her!” Mom and Dad insist. “Are you kidding?” Mattie, the voice of reason, objects.

 

Cole nonetheless decides that this would be the Ultimate Grand Romantic Gesture. And so he flies to London.

 

But when he traces his tracker to somewhere on or beneath the Tower Bridge, he’s unexpectedly attacked by three goons, chloroformed, and wakens in the sinister lair of a giggling torturer — Tim Blake Nelson, deliberately overplaying the role — who believes that Cole is a legendary CIA operative code-named “The Taxman,” and has information about a mysterious whatzit known as “Aztec.” Because, well, Cole was in the wrong place at the right time.