Purple Hearts follows a singer, Cassie, and a marine, Luke, as they plan to fake a marriage to meet their financial requirements.
Purple Hearts Story and Summary
Cassie (Sofia Carson) works at a bar and loves to occasionally perform in the evenings whenever her strict boss allows her to. She has been suffering from type 1 diabetes and struggling to find money to pay for her expensive insulin requirements.
One evening she comes across an old friend of hers, Frankie (Chosen Jacobs), who’s camped nearby with his group of Marines before leaving for Iraq in a week.
A marine named Luke (Nicholas Galitzine) does catch Cassie’s fascination but not before Luke’s friends get on Cassie’s nerves with their casual misogyny. The tension trickles down to an argument between Luke and Cassie – clearly not the best example for a first conversation.
On the other hand, Luke is paid a visit by an old friend, Johnno (Anthony Ippolito), a drug dealer. While Luke refuses to mingle with his old friend as he has mended his ways, Johnno threatens Luke to get the $15,000 Luke owes him.
Finding no way out of her eternal misery to pay rent and medical bills, Cassie decides to approach her old friend, Frankie, with the idea to get out of her struggle.
When Cassie visits Frankie’s house to share her idea, she comes across Luke too. She asks Frankie to marry her as she plans to use the insurance marines get for their spouses. She also tries to convince Frankie by telling him about the extra allowance that married marines get.
Luke, who has been listening to the whole conversation, decides to intervene, welcoming the ire of Cassie. However, Frankie refuses the offer because he has a girlfriend, leaving Cassie disappointed.
The next day, Luke pays a visit to Johnno to pay some of his debt with the money he had at the moment. But finding Johnno angry with the state of affairs, Luke promises to pay the rest of the money with the allowance he will get after marrying Cassie – an idea he comes up with on the spot.
Luke approaches Cassie with her own idea, and Cassie finds the opportunity to survive for a little while, agreeing to the proposal. But that doesn’t improve the camaraderie between the two.
With Frankie in attendance, Luke and Cassie become husband and wife. At the marriage dinner, things go awry between Luke’s friend, Armando, and Cassie. Even though Cassie and Luke do not meet eye to eye on subjects such as war and capitalism, they play the part of ideal couples for the crowd.
At night, Luke breaks down as he has been having a tough time between the marriage and his deployment to Iraq. One thing leads to another, and Luke and Cassie make love. But when Cassie wakes up, finding Luke acting weirdly, she gets disappointed.
After a couple of kisses and goodbyes, Luke departs for Iraq. But before leaving, he instructs Cassie to play the part virtually as well as their calls and emails will be observed.
After the separation, the couple starts sharing more details about their life with each other. Cassie tells Luke about her love for music, and Luke shares the reason behind getting into the marines – to earn his father’s respect.
In the meantime, Luke and his team of marines go through a tough time in Iraq, losing soldiers in the field. Cassie, meanwhile, writes her first original song, taking inspiration from her own story and dedicating it to the soldiers.
When she gets the opportunity to sing the song at a local concert, she posts the video from the concert online.
Purple Hearts Ending Explained
Cassie’s video quickly becomes a hit on the internet, and she rides the popularity wave to become quite a celebrity. When she was partying with her friends after a good bar show, she receives a call from Germany, informing her of Luke’s injury during an IED detonation.
Cassie visits the address given by Luke to give his brother the news, but upon finding Luke’s father, she is forced to reveal to him about their marriage – something she was told not to do.
When Luke is visited by Cassie and his family at the hospital, he asks Cassie to keep the act on for some more months as he does not trust his father, who was in the Military Police. He believes that his father will turn him in if he suspects the marriage to be a sham.
Cassie also discovers that Frankie passed away during the action. She attends his funeral service.
On the other hand, Luke’s dad tells the couple that he will be taking Luke to therapy two times a week. It is clear by now that his dad suspects the couple.
So, the duo pretends to be the perfect couple in front of the family to avoid a court martial although Cassie does not find it very convenient to pass the “wife test”.
Acting as a couple, Luke and Cassie grow closer to each other. But the situation goes awry when Johnno, who’s been threatening Luke for the money because Luke has stopped paying him since the accident, breaks into Cassie’s mother’s house.
The next day, Luke visits Johnno and gives him the money but not before beating him up and giving the guy a warning to stay away from his family.
When Luke reaches home, he finds Cassie ready to jump on him with anger as she just got a call from her mother, who has found out about Cassie’s fake marriage after Johnno spilt the secret to her to take revenge on Luke.
After coming to know that it was Johnno who attacked her mother’s house, Cassie asks Luke for a divorce and tells him to leave before she comes back from her show.
Do Cassie and Luke fall in love?
But when Cassie’s show ends, she receives a call, informing her about Luke’s arrest for fraudulent marriage. In the trial, Luke accepts his actions and gets jail time of 6 months.
As Luke prepares to be arrested, Cassie, who has now gotten a record deal, realizes she loves Luke for real and wants the marriage to sustain.
Just before Luke’s taken in by the military, Cassie rushes to Luke to proclaim her love for him and tell him that she will be waiting when he returns.
After Juke serves his time, Cassie and Luke reunite to live together as a couple. This time, they are a couple in love.
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