Top Gun: Maverick isn’t the only film about the armed services on the release schedule this summer. One of Netflix’s new young adult films, Purple Hearts, features several armed service members as characters. It stars Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine as two young people that cross paths, get married, and deal with all the struggles that come along with that, especially as Galitzine’s character Luke is about to be deployed.
Deadline confirmed Netflix had picked up the film in 2021. The movie was adapted by Kyle Jarrow and Liz Garcia from a book of the same name by Tess Wakefield. Jarrow has written episodes for Valor and Star Trek: Discovery, while Garcia writes for Memphis Beat and Cold Case. Purple Hearts is directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, known for her previous work in Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, Dead to Me, and Spinning Out.
Purple Hearts is coming to the streaming giant soon. Here’s everything to know before it does.
Purple Hearts: The Plot
The synopsis provided by Netflix gives some insight into what viewers can expect. Cassie and Luke marry just for the benefits provided by the United States military, though it doesn’t mention what they each need the benefits for.
In spite of their many differences, Cassie, a struggling singer-songwriter, and Luke, a troubled marine, agree to marry solely for military benefits. But when tragedy strikes, the line between real and pretend begins to blur.
A longer synopsis provided in Production Weekly, as given by What’s on Netflix in 2021, gives more insight into what both characters need from the marriage. Cassie was recently diagnosed with diabetes, which has caused her day-to-day costs to skyrocket. As a bartender trying to make it in the music industry, she can’t afford the medical debt that she’s now strapped with because of her recent diagnosis.
She proposed a military marriage to her friend Frankie, who is in the Army, so she had health insurance to pay for the costs associated with her diabetes. They can split the increase he’ll receive as a married man in the military. When he turns her down, his friend Luke volunteers to take his place. It isn’t clear how he will benefit from their marriage, though it’s said he has “desperate reasons” for wanting to be married himself. Like many films of this nature, what starts as a fake marriage the two are trying to sell seemingly becomes a real one along the way.
Depending on what Luke’s reasons are, the film has the potential to touch on several topics that are incredibly relevant and important today. Diabetes medication and associated materials are becoming increasingly expensive, causing individuals to ration their insulin, which puts them at risk for a variety of diabetes-related complications. As a bartender, it’s likely Cassie doesn’t have health insurance, or what coverage she does have isn’t enough to cover the medical bills she now has.
Luke may benefit from the marriage for various reasons, ranging from “silly” things like his parents being on his back about having someone in his life to needing the increased living allowance from the military to help pay for something. The character is described as “frustratingly intense” in the synopsis from Production Weekly, which could hint at why the situation would help him. If there’s something in his life making him that way, maybe the marriage helps with it.
Purple Hearts: The Cast
Sofia Carson plays Cassie. Audiences may recognize her from the Netflix film Feel the Beat or the film Songbird, in which she starred alongside Riverdale’s KJ Apa. She was also in the Pretty Little Liars spin-off series Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. Nicholas Galitzine is Luke. He previously starred as Prince Robert in Amazon Prime’s Cinderella and has been cast as Prince Henry in the upcoming film adaptation of Red, White, and Royal Blue.
Other cast members playing named characters, as listed by IMDb, include Breana Raquel (SEAL Team) as Riley, Sarah Rich as Hailey, Kendall Chappell as Mila, Nicholas Duvernay (Tyler Perry’s Assisted Living) as Armando, and Kaitlin Huwe as Kylie. Additional cast includes Anthony Ippolito (The Offer), Linden Ashby (Teen Wolf, Army Wives), John Harlan Kim (9-1-1, Nancy Drew), Chosen Jacobs (Hawaii Five-0, It Chapter Two), Kat Cunning (Marry Me), Scott Deckert (Venom), Leroy Edwards III (General Hospital), Rand Guerrero, Josh Cruze (Bullet Train), and Sean Berube.
Release Date
Purple Hearts starts streaming on Netflix on July 29, 2022.
Everything Else We Know
The film’s soundtrack is co-written and performed by lead actress Sofia Carson. A teaser for the movie shared by Netflix on June 21 provided a first look at one of the songs Carson wrote for the film. “Come Back Home” will be available to listen to when the film is released.
The song seems to speak to the struggle of having a loved one deployed elsewhere and the hope that they make it back home. In the teaser, Cassie sings it for Luke while he is in a computer café surrounded by his fellow service people. He turns the volume up, and people gather around the small building, listening through the windows to hear Cassie’s song. It receives favorable reactions from the group.
While you wait, you can tune your guitar in preparation to sing along with the soundtrack or get ready for a young adult film hitting Netflix before Purple Hearts.