"Love Hurts" - Review

Marvin Gable (the wonderful Ke Huy Quan) is a jumper-sporting estate agent who loves his life, bakes heart-shaped cookies for his staff, and absolutely adores his job. But he has a secret past which comes a-knocking, when the mysterious "Rose" (Ariana DeBose) returns to his life, on the run from Marvin's evil gangster brother Alvin (Daniel Wu), whom Marvin used to work for. Now, this Valentine's Day, he has to succumb to his old skills in order to fend off assassins and get his life, and his love, back...

I'm delighted to see Ke Huy Quan headlining an action movie, that's wonderful. He relishes the part, they play with his role in "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once" (his glasses and certain scenes are shot like a Wong Kar Wai movie, flashbacks of him with slicked back hair look like a Tony Leung gangster movie, there's a fight with a bubble tea straw) and he is loving life.
The movie is still frustrating and he deserves better.
The first 20 minutes are fun, great even: a mash up of 2000s romcoms and old-school Hong Kong action movies, the shifts in tone are fun, the occasional spouts of blood are not too jarring, and it's pretty funny. Mustafa Shakir turns up as a poetry-spouting, quill tossing assassin named Raven and is good fun; whilst Lio Tipton (whom I love) has carved a niche for themselves between this, "Crazy Stupid Love", "Warm Bodies" and "Mississippi Grind" as "quirky supporting character who is the best bit of the movie", this part would have been Aubrey Plaza 10 years ago, and by sheer dumb luck Tipton happens to feature in every scene which is good. They also get a lovely, fun goofy subplot with Raven, and alongside Shakir sells it. Marshawn Lynch (watch "Bottoms") and European Henry Rollins lookalike Andre Eriksen play a pair of rather amusing henchmen and have a very good fight sequence in a house, one of the highlights and showcases of Ke Huy Quan.
Then the middle of the movie happens.
It nosedives quickly, with some of the absolute worst dialogue and clunkiest exposition of recent memory grinding it to a halt, all in service of a plot simultaneously boiler plate boring, needlessly intricate and complex, and told/done almost entirely off screen. It grinds things to a halt, subtracts from the energy Ke Huy Quan had been bringing, takes valuable time away from the comedy (and Tipton, God Damn it Hollywood!) and fight scenes; it's exceedingly frustrating. A few sessions of rewrites could have streamlined this and made it a lot more coherant and cohesive, but as it stands it's a clunky steam train to tedium. Which is even more of a shame because those glimpses of greatness leap forth in the final act: Tipton and Shakir's act climaxes, there's a bombastic shootout and knife fight in a house, there's colour on screen and wonderful jokes, and it knows what it wants to be in the finale. Unfortunately the wasted potential of Act 2 means that the great stuff is buried and the poorer stuff which would be forgivable or charming (the age gap and lack of chemistry between Quan and DeBose, the non-threatening villain given to Wu who tries his best, the superfluous Cam Gigandet character) comes further to the surface and drag it down.
It's a shame really, it's a frustrating movie I wanted to work a lot more than it does, particularly with its genre mashups.

"Everything, Everywhere, All At Once"

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is a stressed out owner of a dry cleaner's, determined to stay afloat during the impending audit by battleaxe IRS employee Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), a visit from her distant father (the always wonderful James Hong), her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) bringing her girlfriend round and hoping to be accepted, and her cinammon roll of a husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) has a secret... At the IRS building, something strange happens...

This movie is spectacular, there is no other word for it. A sumptuous banquet of creativity, wonder, imagination, insanity and unhinged wonder - Daniels have shown us what cinema is supposed to be about. The ideas are "mad", yes, but only because we're not used to such freedom of creativity on screen, because all too often there is a tight stanglehold on the sort of things that are, you know, good. The directors keep a tight reign on the madness (leaping onto dildos, in a sequence which had me crying with laughter, luchadore cock battles, eating chapstick to gain superpowers, James Hong in a home-made mech suit) with a touching, and genuinely sweet introspective examination of nihilism and existentialism, as well as the relationship between Evelyn and her family. Nothing matters, so embrace things you love. After all, what do you have to lose?
The film is gorgeous to behold, has editing which dreams are made of (I'm in awe that the makers created an entire marble bust of Michelle Yeoh's head for a split second editing gag, same with an animated sequence) in moments which flicker by with genuine talent and skill. It's slick and smooth as butter.
And in a movie where James Hong Tokyo-Drifting his wheelchair at a luchadore at super speed is only, like the 8th weirdest thing to happen in those ten minutes, there is a lot to love.
Every person is going to have a favourite part, or moment, or thing they love. Personally, it's the little things: I loved that the shots of Evelyn and Waymond in the "successful" world looked like something from "In the Mood for Love", and a sequence involving rocks. The aforementioned dildo sequence is a highlight too, I was crying with laughter, and "Raccoon" gag pays off wonderfully.
Each and every scene is packed with something new, some other detail you may have missed, and I reccommend this movie whole-heartedly