Love Hurts (2025)
Directed by Jonathan Eusebio
A realtor is pulled back into the life he left behind after his former partner-in-crime resurfaces with an ominous message. With his crime-lord brother also on his trail, he must confront his past and the history he never fully buried.
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43 films that influenced Love Hurts
What critics say influenced Love Hurts
John Wick re-popularized the genre…
If the silliness of "John Wick killed a dude with a pencil" was used as the basis of an action comedy, then you would have Love Hurts.
In the end “Love Hurts” feels like “John Wick” minus the style—and the dog and car.
Mate the mayhem of John Wick with the boogie of Quentin Tarantino and out pops an annoyingly quirky offspring.
If you’re aiming for a wild world of colorful killers, the John Wick series is beloved for a reason.
The title of John Wick and Chad Stahelski disciple Jonathan Eusebio’s action rom-com Love Hurts feels like a misnomer, or maybe a red herring.
Director
Jackie Chan
Critics invoke Chan by name, and compare Love Hurts to 2 of Chan’s films.
Visuals
On Chan, rather than any one film
Between Quan and Eusebio, Love Hurts feels like a love letter to Hong Kong kung fu movies and the films of Jackie Chan while still embracing the more American tradition of the romantic comedy.
Quan goes fully Jackie Chan…
…often clearly indebted to the absurdist physicality of comedy-action greats like Jackie Chan…
…with a dash of Jackie Chan chaos…
…much as with Jackie Chan and even going back to the silent clowns, Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, make his milquetoast Marv a most unlikely action hero…
While “Love Hurts” never reaches the heights of a “Police Story” movie, it certainly captures that spirit.
It’s like watching Armour of God or Wheels on Meals and then suddenly someone drops in a kill from the notoriously hyper-violent Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.
Violent Night, Sisu, and Nobody have all proved that audiences will always root for the implausible badass with right on their side, and that’s true again in Love Hurts.
Nobody flanderized it…
If you’ve seen A History of Violence, John Wick or Nobody, the premise should be familiar to you: a mild-mannered man has the bliss of suburban life ripped asunder by the violent past he escaped rearing its bloodthirsty head.
…just like mild-mannered Bob Odenkirk in Nobody, turns out to have a secret violent past…
As in Nobody, the 2021 Leitch concoction starring Bob Odenkirk as an unassuming ex-hit man, a wolf comes in sheep’s clothing.
The presence of two recent Oscar recipients may be somewhat enticing, but it is more likely that fans of 87North’s surprise 2021 hit Nobody, which was also about an everyman who actually possessed lethal fighting skills, will be most intrigued by this similarly-themed film.
As one of four films released in February in honor of Valentine’s Day—“Companion” (2025), “Heart Eyes” (2025) and “Love Me” (2025)—and aim to celebrate the holiday with unexpected genre mashups that lead to heightened tension, “Love Hurts” just does not feel compelling since the stakes are virtually nonexistent.
My friend Vince just reviewed the slasher horror rom-com Heart Eyes and this time we’ve got a Valentine-themed thriller comedy Love Hurts.
It’s refreshing to see a sleek, canny, well-shot genre mashup now in theatres that’s predicated on Valentine’s Day violence, the surprising utility of a straw as a weapon and the climactic use of the dialogue “Love hurts.”
Too bad those complimentary descriptions above apply only to Heart Eyes and not to Love Hurts.
If you’re taking your sweetheart out on the 14th and you’ve seen this movie (or “Heart Eyes”) together, you might want to consider an upscale place where the drinks don’t invite their use, lest your date get the wrong idea.
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Director
David Leitch
Critics invoke Leitch by name, and compare Love Hurts to 3 of Leitch’s films.
Visuals
On Leitch, rather than any one film
The sequences aren’t as inventive as Leitch’s Fall Guy though…
…adding depth to his familiar style in Fall Guy…
…but in the Leitch-directed Bullet Train and The Fall Guy…
If The Fall Guy couldn’t get a nomination for its visual effects, then this one won’t be able to earlier.
Director Jonathan Eusebio, a talented fight coordinator with titles like The Fall Guy and Violent Night and assorted John Wicks to his credit, doesn’t give the action any spontaneity or grace or visceral pizzazz.
87North Productions, an action-heavy house founded by John Wick co-director David Leitch that has spawned plenty of sufficiently simple pleasures like Nobody, Day Shift, Violent Night and Leitch’s own The Fall Guy.
From 87North—producers of the groundbreaking action films Nobody, Violent Night, Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde, and The Fall Guy—comes a visceral, high-octane story of wrath and revenge.
Atomic Blonde and The Equalizer capitalized on it…
From 87North—producers of the groundbreaking action films Nobody, Violent Night, Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde, and The Fall Guy—comes a visceral, high-octane story of wrath and revenge.
…but in the Leitch-directed Bullet Train and The Fall Guy…
87North doesn’t always hit, as with the bloat of Bullet Train…
From 87North—producers of the groundbreaking action films Nobody, Violent Night, Bullet Train, Atomic Blonde, and The Fall Guy—comes a visceral, high-octane story of wrath and revenge.
…a pedigree from the production house behind Nobody and Bullet Train.
David Leitch, the former stuntman who produced this labored action-comedy, dabbled in such designer breeding a few years ago in his flashy IMAX caper Bullet Train, spiking a shallow gene pool of Pulp Fiction knockoffs with some kung-fu choreography.
Director
Quentin Tarantino
Critics invoke Tarantino by name, and compare Love Hurts to 3 of Tarantino’s films.
Visuals
On Tarantino, rather than any one film
The fellow Oscar-winner seems to be operating in a completely different movie, giving more of a Quentin Tarantino-coded performance.
It’s as if Quentin Tarantino came in to guest direct those sequences.
…spiking a shallow gene pool of Pulp Fiction knockoffs with some kung-fu choreography…
Screenwriters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore get too cute with the arrival of new Knuckles’ henchmen King (Marshawn “Beastmode” Lynch) and Otis (André Eriksen), who they tend to write like a modern-day Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction.
“Reservoir Dogs” unleashed a crush of Quentin Tarantino copycats in the 1990s.
Whenever she appears on the screen, Eusebio succeeds at shouting out Blaxsploitation and seventies action films with their cool cars much like Quentin Tarantino did in “Jackie Brown” (1997), but Tarantino had a story and a star like Pam Grier that was strong enough to hold up the sumptuous visuals, so it did not feel like a Potemkin Village.
If you’re looking for a great, funny romance that stars an assassin, try Grosse Pointe Blank.
It’s Grosse Pointe Blank meets John Wick, with a dash of Jackie Chan chaos — or, at least, it tries to be.
Marvin resists his offer to return to the fold, a la A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE…
If you’ve seen A History of Violence, John Wick or Nobody, the premise should be familiar to you: a mild-mannered man has the bliss of suburban life ripped asunder by the violent past he escaped rearing its bloodthirsty head.
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As one of four films released in February in honor of Valentine’s Day—“Companion” (2025), “Heart Eyes” (2025) and “Love Me” (2025)—and aim to celebrate the holiday with unexpected genre mashups that lead to heightened tension, “Love Hurts” just does not feel compelling since the stakes are virtually nonexistent.
ALSO: READ OUR REVIEW OF COMPANION HERE…
It’s like watching Armour of God or Wheels on Meals and then suddenly someone drops in a kill from the notoriously hyper-violent Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.