Love is totally worth it.  Despite the title, that is the last line in Love Hurts.  The reason it has such an appellation is to make a joke.  If you watched the trailer before reading this, you have the punch line.  It is literally that mild-mannered Marvin Gable’s (Ke Huy Quan) love for Rose (Ariana DeBose) brings him pain.  There is a Christian parallel for this with Jesus’ Passion.  Indeed, the word “Passion” speaks to the love God had for us in allowing His only Son to die on the Cross for our sins.  Love does not have to be painful, but it is totally worth it.  I am not sure this movie is worth it, but such is my love for writing these reviews for you that I am willing to see some of these awful pieces of cinema for you.

For Marvin, there is nothing about his life that would suggest Love Hurts.  It is Valentine’s Day, and he is preparing special, heart-shaped cookies as part of his commitment to being the best realtor he can be.  He underscores his positive attitude as he rides his bike to a suburban Milwaukee home that he is showing by narrating a bunch of inspirational quotes.  Unfortunately, Rose is about to ruin what he expects to be another perfect day.  She is the woman he loves, but she has been away for a couple years, presumed dead.  For the sake of understanding the plot better, I am going to give you the backstory now instead of parceling it out in spurts as does the movie.  Marvin was an enforcer and hitman for his mafia brother, Alvin “Knuckles” Gable (Daniel Wu).  Rose also worked for Alvin, but another associate, Renny Merlow (Cam Gigandet), was seemingly jealous of the influence she wielded over Alvin . . . I guess.  The film does not linger on details too long, but the gist is that Renny framed Rose for embezzling millions of dollars from Alvin that Renny stole for himself.  The person sent to rectify this situation is Marvin, but he could not kill the woman he loves.  Instead, he frees her, telling her to run, and it is at this point that he decides to leave the world of crime for the world of real estate.  Yet, he does so in the same town in which he had always lived?  Did he think no one would find him?  Well, when Rose returns and starts leaving notes for all her former enemies, Alvin’s new hitman, Raven (Mustafa Shakir), is sent to Marvin’s office.  Raven is there not to discuss housing, but to beat out of Marvin Rose’s whereabouts.  Marvin’s old fighting reflexes come back to him, allowing him to render Raven unconscious.  Marvin goes to leave for the day, telling Ashley (Lio Tipton), his morose assistant, about his departure.  Before he gets to the door, however, he is approached by his boss, Cliff Cussick (Sean Astin), who has come to give Marvin the realtor of the year award.  Marvin is touched by the accolade, seeing it is justification for his hard work.  He then asks to borrow Cliff’s car before finally getting to go home.  He is followed there by two of Renny’s enforcers, King (Marshawn Lynch) and Otis (André Eriksen), who are there to also find Rose.  Unlike Alvin, Renny wants her dead because she is the only one who can implicate Renny in the theft of Alvin’s funds.  Once more, Marvin is forced to fight his way free, taking his award with him, but is met at Cliff’s car by Rose.  She renders Marvin unconscious with a stun gun, and he comes to in her club.  She tells him that he is living a fake life, and that she needs him to be his old self to help her get revenge on Alvin and Renny.  For now, Marvin’s only plan is to hide as much as possible, taking her to the house he had been trying to sell earlier as a convenient hiding place.  Along the way, she also reveals that Alvin has been doing the Russians wrong, again in some largely unspecified way, and she has his accountant, Kippy Betts (Rhys Darby), as proof.  Meanwhile, Ashley has encountered the knocked-out Raven, reading his book of poetry while he slumbers.  I did not make up this aspect of the plot, by the way, nor the part where she falls in love with him through his scribblings.  They talk into the next morning when Marvin calls her because the prospective buyers have arrived to fill out the paperwork to purchase the home.  This means Raven has now learned of Marvin’s location.  At the same time, Kippy manages to chew his way free from his bonds, miraculously finds a working payphone, and calls Renny to inform on not only where Marvin is, but also Rose.  As before, King and Otis are sent to deal with the situation, which ruins Marvin’s sale, but forces him to team up with Raven for the moment.  Raven is saved in the end by Ashley, who stays Marvin’s hand when she admits that she loves the hitman.  In the kerfuffle, Rose leaves and heads for Alvin’s headquarters, confident that Marvin will follow her.  She is right, and when Marvin gets there, Alvin is wearing the cowboy hat he took from Cliff after he killed the land mogul.  From here, it is a bunch of punching and kicking that ends with Renny’s death and Russians showing up to take care of Alvin.  Once the dust settles, Marvin again confesses his love for Rose, and they are free to be together, or not, who knows?

The ambiguity of the conclusion to Love Hurts can be attributed to a number of factors.  First, the movie is not long, barely over eighty minutes.  I can appreciate a short run time as much as anyone, but it also does not leave room for much exposition.  Because of this, you have to nail the details without being verbose.  Unfortunately, the film fails in this regard, which is remarkable given that it stars Ke Huy Quan.  His career bears some scrutiny.  He has been making a name for himself lately with movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and a guest starring role in Marvel’s Loki (2021-2023) series.  If you have seen Love Hurts, and/or any of the others I just mentioned, you might say to yourself, wait, where have I seen this person before?  He got his start as Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr.’s (Harrison Ford) sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).  Quan was also Data (Ke Huy Quan) in The Goonies (1985).  Looking at what he has done in Hollywood over the years matches with lines in Love Hurts, and speaks to some important lessons from a Catholic perspective.  At one point, Alvin is about to murder Cliff, finding Marvin’s boss trying to locate his car.  Cliff guesses what is about to happen after Alvin explains Marvin’s shady past.  Before dying, Cliff remarks that he believes in giving people second chances.  Catholicism aligns with this idea, having the sacrament of Reconciliation to facilitate it.  As such, though the vehicle for it is pretty bad, the film nonetheless demonstrates this truth in more ways than one.

There is more to the notion of receiving absolution and thereby getting a second chance as laid out in Love Hurts.  What it takes is a desire to change, which is also embodied in the movie.  Marvin discusses how he had never wanted to become the monster Alvin made him, which is why he took the opportunity to leave behind a life of crime.  Faith works in the same way.  If you do not desire a relationship with God, you will never change.  Sin is comfortable, easy.  Those are states of being that are difficult to shake, becoming harder to do so the longer you wallow in them.  Just because this becomes harder does not mean it is impossible.  Nothing is impossible for God, but He needs our cooperation.  That is how Faith works, and it would not be Faith if there was a lack of free will on our part.  Unfortunately, the film does not follow through on this concept.  It is right that change is unlikely for the person who does not desire it.  However, what is Marvin’s character arch?  We meet him after he has become the warm-hearted real estate agent, but learn that he had once been a cold-blooded killer.  It is this latter side of him that Rose seeks to tempt out of him, saying that it is the real Marvin.  I have trouble with this because Alvin and Renny say the same things about Marvin.  What I can say about Marvin, or any other human being walking this planet, is that God did not create us for destruction.  He made us to be more like Marvin the real estate agent who puts thought into all his interactions with others.  Even in the midst of the chaos created by King and Otis shooting at the house Marvin is trying to sell, Marvin is reassuring the prospective buyers that everything is going to be okay.  This is played for comedic effect, but this is more the “real” Marvin than anything he did for his brother.

Indeed, I have trouble believing that all the violence we see in Love Hurts makes it good Valentine’s Day material.  I heard somebody today on the radio say he plans on taking his girlfriend to see it on the actual day.  If I currently had a girlfriend, that is not a plan I would make, but then again, I am still single.  In any case, I would not recommend this movie under any circumstance.