Ke Huy Quan plays a happy-go-lucky real estate agent named Marvin Gable whose past life as a hit man comes back to haunt him in “Love Hurts.” The action-comedy goes hard on elaborately choreographed fight sequences and violent, bloody deaths. Anything from a bubble tea straw to a cookie cutter is fair game in these gruesome showdowns.

But while the derivative and cartoonish spectacle can be fun and impressive at times, “Love Hurts” just doesn’t work in the end, hampered by a lack of directorial vision, comedic pacing and an ensemble of caricatures instead of characters. “Love Hurts” may run only 83 minutes, but if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen it all.

It had a lot going for it, too, including two recent Oscar winners in Quan and Ariana DeBose of “West Side Story” in the lead roles, a fine premise and a hoard of fun actors in the ensemble. Sean Astin plays Quan’s boss at the real estate agency, a stunty, nostalgia play for “Goonies” fans that actually gives the film a rare authentic moment, and Marshawn Lynch, who is proving himself to be a comedic gem no matter the material.

But there’s something immensely off about the tone, which isn’t clever or silly enough to be funny, and its ham-fisted attempts to tie it to Valentine’s Day with subplots about love, from the jaded assistant who falls for a poetry-writing goon to another hired thug who is trying to get his wife back.

Poor Quan does all the cringey voiceover, though he mostly comes out unscathed. As audiences saw in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” he’s great at switching believably between debonair fighter and tame nice guy, and he is undeniably compelling as a lead.

DeBose, on the other hand, has only a barely- there character to play with. Rose Carlisle is a thinly drawn femme fatale in heels and leopard print coats with a penchant for laughing maniacally and drawing mustaches on Marvin’s real estate billboards. She was supposed to be dead after a deal gone wrong, but Marvin spared her because of love. Now she wants her life back, and, presumably, Marvin, though their chemistry might suggest otherwise. She needs to kill his crime lord brother Knuckles (Daniel Wu) to be free. There’s a lot of talk about “hiding ain’t living,” which sounds fine in theory but never quite syncs up — Marvin likes his new, nonviolent life.

Like “John Wick,” “The Fall Guy” and other less memorable movies, “Love Hurts” is the latest in a string of films directed by guys who cut their teeth as stuntmen. This is a tale as old as cinema, but most recent efforts usually seem to have a common denominator in David Leitch, who has a producer credit on this one. Directing responsibilities on “Love Hurts” went to Jonathan Eusebio, who was a fight coordinator on “John Wick,” and perhaps needed a bit more help here — a better script, sharper editing and a coherent vision.

Artificiality as an aesthetic is all fine and good, but “Love Hurts” feels too much like the charmless, ripped-from-the-Magnolia-showroom homes that Marvin is hawking to yuppies around Milwaukee. It may seem good enough in a Zillow photo or a movie trailer, a facsimile of what we think homes and films of a certain quality should look like.

But spend a little time with the goon whose only zinger seems to be calling Rose the B-word, and you come to realize that “Love Hurts” is all hollow underneath — a “Truman Show” set without the real world behind it.

MPA rating: R (for strong, bloody violence and language throughout)

Running time: 1:23

How to watch: In theaters