Expectations can be tricky. And misleading. After a relatively quiet January where there was really no movie that lived up – or down – to the negative expectations January has set for itself, we tiptoe into February, another month where American movie distributors have a reputation for dumping the worst they have to offer. And unfortunately, I’ve found a movie that feels like it belongs here. And I thought this one would be an easy good time, boasted by stars I like. Unfortunately it became glaringly apparent through the seemingly endless 83 minutes of Jonathan Eusebio’s Love Hurts that a film cannot coast on the good graces of its stars. You also need a script.

Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan) is a realtor in Milwaukee. He’s very sunny and very enthusiastic and loves his job. His face is on park benches and buses and he has his own catchphrase. He used to be somebody else. Marvin, in a previous life, was a hit man with presumed mob connections. On Valentine’s Day, he receives an ominous message from Rose (Ariana DeBose), mysterious woman from his past with whom he has unfinished business. The situation kind of spirals from there.

The problem with Love Hurts is that it feels so irredeemably flimsy and nonsensical. There are so many things about the world screenwriters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore have created that they have so clearly not thought through. For instance it makes no sense that this man who was a hired killer with mob connections could start a new life in the exact same city without changing his name, or his appearance in any significant way. And the fact that Marvin is kind of a local celebrity with his face on billboards and TV commercials should make him an easy target for anyone who wishes ill on him, right? This is something the movie pretends is not happening but it’s just one of many egregious oversights that took place in the writing of this wretched screenplay.

Ke Huy Quan’s comeback story has been one of the most compelling Oscar narratives of the past decade, and one of the most emotionally satisfying. The child star whose career had stalled as an adult, and didn’t think he had much of a career moving forward, flips the script and wins an Oscar, and was clearly so happy to attend each awards ceremony for his winning role in Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s really cool to see him in a leading role in an action movie, you know he’s very excited to be here. But I really hope he gets some better movies than this moving forward. The opportunity to be in a big, splashy action movie from David Leitch’s production company is probably what attracted him to this project. But Love Hurts is no John Wick.

In a situation not dissimilar from Ke Huy Quan’s, recent Oscar winner Ariana DeBose has also had some trouble booking post-Oscar roles worthy of her. And DeBose unfortunately is terrible in Love Hurts, but I don’t think it’s her fault. She is seemingly set up to fail in a story that is never believable even for a moment. She’s supposed to be a romantic figure in Quan’s past, but considering the considerable age gap between the two actors and their pronounced lack of chemistry, you leave the film with questions about how all this went down, and you really don’t end up caring about either of them because neither of them seem like actual people. But they’re also not the kind of larger than life action movie characters that can also be fun in the right context. They’re both just kind of nothing.

We do have a few members of our supporting cast attempting to liven things up around here. Lio Tipton is fun as Marvin’s put upon assistant at the real estate office. Mustafa Shakir is kind of fun as the big, hulking hit man with a sensitive side, with whom Tipton’s character finds a spark. Marshawn Lynch and André Erikson are kind of fun as a bumbling hit man duo hunting Marvin and Rose. The film has enough supporting players desperately trying to distract from the utter banality of this film’s central storyline. 

I mentioned before this is from David Leitch’s production company and it’s clear what they’re going for here. The posters tell you this is from the producers of Violent Night and Nobody, and it’s clear the idea was, let’s just do that again. But there’s a level of choreography and precision to the fight scenes of those movies that is totally absent here. This film looks like trash, and the fight scenes use a lot of the kind of shaky-cam that is often present in action movies where they didn’t bother to choreograph the fight scenes properly, and the goal is to distract the viewer from the ugliness on display. It doesn’t work because as viewers, we have now seen enough of these movies where the trickery is clear a mile away.

I left my day job an hour early on a difficult Monday hoping I could go catch a matinee of Love Hurts and it would take me out of my bad mood. It didn’t. It kind of bummed me out even more to see these two actors who I like and respect, wasting their time in this mess of a film that seemingly doesn’t understand why they are interesting as performers and isn’t offering them anything fun to do. I hope Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose can find projects worthy of them moving forward, but maybe they both need better agents. Love Hurts should be a breezy, enjoyable fun time at the movies and instead it’s just not much of anything.