Purple Hearts (1984)

Drama, War

116 min    -    Rating: 5.8

Ken Wahl, Cheryl Ladd, Stephen Lee…

It's sometime during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Don Jardian of the US Navy, who would have just started a lucrative medical practice if he was still in the States funded in large part by his girlfriend Jill's father, is entering his third month working as a surgeon at a mobile hospital unit in Vietnam. While working hard to do whatever he can to ensure that anyone on his operating table makes it home with a Purple Heart instead of in a body bag, he admits that his emotions to the people he sees on his operating table has been numbed due to the overall horrors of the war. In accompanying one of those patients to the naval hospital in Da Nang, he encounters Lieutenant Deborah Solomon, a surgical nurse at that hospital, she who, for the first time since he's arrived at Vietnam, makes him "feel" again. In falling for Deborah, Don does whatever he can to go back to Da Nang over and over again with the intent purpose to see her. Conversely, Deborah is slower to succumb to her attraction to Don due to something that has happened to her in her recent life which she has not disclosed to him. Beyond that issue and their distance which may be obstacles for Don to overcome in having a relatio