WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Netflix’s “Purple Hearts.”
It is a love story as old as time.
Marine meets a girl, the girl needs medical attention, Marine needs BAH to pay off an old drug dealer. So what do they do? Get married after three brief conversations the day before he’s shipped to Iraq and split the money.
That’s the premise of Netflix’s “Purple Hearts,” starring Sofia Carson as Cassie Salazar and Nicholas Galitzine as Luke Morrow.
Cassie is a struggling singer who works at a bar that sometimes allows her band to perform a song every Friday. He has type I diabetes, but his art doesn’t allow him to pay for his health insurance. Luke, on the other hand, is a recovering addict. He joined the Marine Corps to make a fresh start and earn his father’s respect, but he owes his former dealer a large sum of money.
She first proposes to a lifelong friend turned Marine to participate in the fraudulent marriage, but he turns her down as he already has a girlfriend. Enter his bunkmate, Luke. And while the marriage is fake, the consummation that takes place at the base hotel after their courthouse wedding certainly isn’t…
Despite being essentially strangers, the two Skype often so Uncle Sam doesn’t notice the fake marriage. But after some talk, Luke becomes Cassie’s muse, and she writes a song for the deployed men called “Come Back Home.” Unfortunately, Luke actually returns home with a serious improvised explosive device injury, turning their fake marriage into one where the couple now must care for each other…in sickness and in sickness.
As you can imagine, eventually the Marine Corps finds out about the charade, Luke loses everything and has to serve a prison sentence. On the other hand, all of Cassie’s dreams come true: her band takes off and opens for Florence + the Machine. Everything fits for her, except for the small inconvenience of having fallen in love with her false husband.
The film is based on a novel by Tess Wakefield, and is a kind of soap opera about a military marriage contracted for benefits. The best way to describe the movie itself is wound in action: it tries, but it doesn’t go 100%. It’s exactly as cheesy as you’d expect, but I couldn’t look away. The plot is thin and the military premise is cliche, but frankly, the chemistry between Galitzine and Carson is off the charts.
Plus, once Luke is done with jail time, he and Cassie live happily ever after, with a final montage on the beach that looks like a Tommy Bahama ad for white linen.
Sarah Sicard is a senior editor at Military Times. She previously served as the digital editor for the Military Times and editor for the Army Times. Other work can be found at National Defense Magazine, Task & Purpose and Defense News.
