Ariana DeBose doesn't believe in coincidence. She does, however, "believe in divine timing," she told Yahoo Entertainment. So when she handed the Oscar statuette to Ke Huy Quan when he won Best Supporting Actor at the 2023 Academy Awards,

The Oscar winning actor's first lead role is a major misfire that has plenty of violence but little else to recommend it

Ke Huy Quan has said Steven Spielberg influenced his decision to accept this role, and David Fear of Rolling Stone agrees Quan deserves a chance to showcase his skills in a leading role, but this “lazy action flick” isn’t it. Love may hurt, Fear says, but not as much as watching a great actor stuck in a bad movie. The critic continues:

It's movie time, and an Oscar contender is truly, to me, the best movie that we'll talk about this week. We see Ke Huy Quan in a lead role, finally, in "Love Hurts."

In 'Love Hurts,' the likable actor is stuck juggling a nonsensical Valentine’s Day plot, Jackie Chan-style stunts and various other half-baked ideas.

Directed by Jonathan Eusebio, with a screenplay written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore, Love Hurts stars Quan as a former hit man named Marvin Gable, who’s launched a new career for himself as a successful realtor. But as any former hitman in any movie ever can tell you, the past never stays in the past.

Ke Huy Quan plays a happy-go-lucky real estate agent named Marvin Gable whose past life as a hitman comes back to haunt him in “Love Hurts.” The action-comedy goes hard on elaborately choreographed fight sequences and violent,

Oscar winner Ariana DeBose stars as Rose, a lawyer who starts a game of revenge with her old partner in crime, Marvin Gable (Ke Huy Quan). “Love Hurts” opens this weekend and is veteran stunt coordinator JoJo Eusebio’s feature film directing debut.