Purple Hearts immediately loses its feet while attempting to balance a variety of clichés, leaving just a soulless adaptation to hold it together.
Purple Hearts is predicted to be the most watched movie on Netflix this year. It is written like conservative fanfiction. The movie may try to show a romance between two people who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but everything else is overshadowed by its insistence on locating all of its affections with the American military.
| Purple Hearts Director | Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum |
| Cast | Sofia Carson, Nicholas Galitzine, Linden Ashby, and others |
| Runtime | 124 minutes |
Storyline: An aspiring musician and a soon-to-be deployed U.S. Marine enter into a marriage of convenience, but must ultimately overcome their differences to make it work.
Nicholas Galitzine portrays Luke Morrow, a U.S. Marine officer who is about to be deployed, and Sofia Carson plays Cassie Salazar, an aspiring musician. The storyline of the movie completely devotes itself to including as many themes as it can through Cassie and Luke’s personal lives.
Cassie, who was born to an illegal immigrant, is depicted as working many jobs to pay off her debt while finding it difficult to pay for her insulin therapy. Luke, on the other hand, is a sober addict who is isolated from his family and who must pay off his debts.After getting off to a bad start because of their opposing political ideologies, Luke and Cassie soon realize that a phony marriage would provide Cassie access to the medical insurance she needs to pay for her medication and would also give Luke access to a monthly allowance.
Purple Hearts is a melting pot of American issues, including immigration, Big ‘unaffordable’ Pharma, the drug epidemic, and the United States’ numerous military operations abroad. Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, the director, refrains from using this as an occasion to make social commentary. In the course of the movie’s nearly two hours, we witness these challenges covered up by easy fixes, almost all of which have their roots in the conservative school of thought. The convictions that formed the basis of Luke and Cassie’s disagreement are ultimately undermined by this.
The popular and timeless “enemies-to-lovers” cliché has been used to great effect in Purple Hearts, which has gained a lot of viewers because of this. Although it is a simple cliché to perform, it is equally amusing to get wrong.
Luke and Cassie are shown to be firmly situated at opposite extremes of the political spectrum. The conclusion of the movie, which demands that these two find a way to put aside their disagreements, rushes the characters to that point of agreement while leaving them in a confused state.
While Cassie, a liberal immigrant of color, is initially depicted to have negative feelings toward the military, by the halfway point in the film, her character is completely free of any such sentiments. Instead, the plot shifts to her producing songs for the soldiers’ emotional support and tending to an injured Luke. It feels less of a gamble, less of a risk, and less of a sacrifice for Cassie to be with Luke when her ideals are written in as being so transient and readily broken, making the foundation of the plot flimsy.
Luke, on the other hand, keeps a more consistent personality. His belief that “not all soldiers are wicked” does not change, and his development is intended to demonstrate him acquiring more military virtues. However, this has less to do with the quality of the script and more to do with the circumstances under which the movie was made and the practicalities of the production.
The military-entertainment complex’ is a special union of convenience between the two businesses that only exists in the United States. In exchange for a positive image of the U.S. armed forces, the entertainment industry has received access to unique equipment and locations for decades. In that sense, the U.S. Department of Defense also works with screenwriters on the scripts. Purple Hearts’ finished product reflects this as well, as Rosenbaum revealed in an interview with a media site. A Navy veteran served as a military advisor and modified the script to provide the producers access to special defense filming locations. She acknowledged that the alteration in the script was made to balance how the Marine Corps was portrayed.
Purple Hearts is a challenging project from a genre standpoint. It not only seeks to do so, but it also wants to do so in a highly heated environment. Given that both Cassie and Luke appear to have been born with political inclinations, it also walks the line of “the personal is political,” therefore it ought to have put that issue front and center while resolving their differences. By excluding the same, a shallow product is produced.
This feels like a cowardly excursion for a movie that explores so many political concerns, and the audience is left with a generic Netflix book-to-movie adaption.