Jacob Elordi’s explosion into the limelight has been nothing short of remarkable. Anyone who has seen his recent body of work, including his portrayal of the spoiled, naive Felix Catton in Saltburn and Nate Jacobs in Euphoria, will agree. But to really see what this guy can do as an actor, viewers need to go back to 2020, to 2 Hearts, an underrated tear-jerker about organ donation that very few people saw in theaters because, well… COVID was busy setting the world on fire.
According to verified reports, the film’s director, Lance Hool, found Elordi via an open audition before The Kissing Booth even started filming. Suffice it to say, it technically makes 2 Hearts his first wide theatrical release. This is where it all started for Elordi, and it’s worth taking a second look.
Two Love Stories, One Gut-Punch Twist
The premise of 2 Hearts reads like two love stories that don’t belong in the same space. But watch long enough, and it becomes quite clear why they do. One story is about Chris Gregory (Elordi), a relatively aimless college kid who shows up at school, meets a girl named Sam (Tiera Skovbye), and falls into that first-love kind of romance that challenges even the hardest of cynics to believe in soulmates.
Then there’s this other story running alongside, albeit in a completely different decade. It puts Adam Canto in the role of Jorge Bacardi, a Cuban exile who has been living on borrowed time since childhood (doctors told his parents he might not survive past his early twenties). He meets Leslie (Radha Mitchell), a flight attendant on a plane. They fall in love, too, and for an hour, the viewer is left wondering what one story has to do with the other.
The remaining half an hour plus clears that confusion and pulls everything together in a way that makes sense for someone who’s watching for the first time. There’s no need to spoil the movie, but what’s worth knowing upfront is that the film’s title is a little misleading. It’s not simply a story about organ donation and transplant, and that realization makes the emotional payoff land harder when it eventually comes.
Quiet, Restrained, and Devastating — Elordi at His Best
To say that not everyone warmed up to Elordi’s performance would be massively understating the obvious. Whether that reaction was a byproduct of the global challenges at the time remains to be seen. But some critics literally called him “show-offy” and said that he acted like a privileged prep school kid. That’s a bit of a stretch because his character, Chris, is not complicated at all but goofy, warm, and easy to like without even trying. And that’s the whole point, because the movie only works if the viewer cares about him.
Elordi plays the whole thing so naturally, like he’s not even acting. He’s just being a regular kid. For instance, there’s a “blink, and you miss it” scene early in the movie where Chris walks into the DMV to take his driving test and fills out an organ donor form in about two seconds flat, like it’s the least important thing he’ll do that day. At the time, it plays like a joke, but by the time the film is done, that moment takes on a completely different meaning.
The fact that Elordi pulled off a character like Chris (all warmth and heart) with the same conviction that he later applied to portray a character like Nate Jacobs (his character from Euphoria, whom Elordi himself has called a “sociopath and a narcissist”) says a lot about his range as an actor. Too bad he barely got any credit for such a layered performance.
2 Hearts Bombed in 2020 But Hits Differently Now
There’s no need to mince words. Like most movies released in 2020, 2 Hearts was a box office failure, pulling in just over $1.2 million. Why? Theaters were either closed or empty because of COVID. To make matters worse, critics gave it a brutal 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while also calling it sappy melodrama just for good measure. When a movie gets that kind of review, it usually puts paid to any hopes it has of making a comeback.
Thankfully, 2 Hearts dodged that bullet. And it’s largely down to streaming platforms like Netflix, where ordinary people found it. Before long, it shot into the top 10 and stayed there. People were posting about how they ugly cried throughout the second half of the movie. The audience score of 87% on Rotten Tomatoes is the total opposite of what critics thought, and proved once again that sometimes the people, ordinary film lovers, know better.
Knowing that there’s a real story behind the film makes it hit even harder. The real Jorge Bacardi didn’t just fund the film, alongside his wife, he lived it. And he died in September 2020, before seeing it finally connect with audiences. That detail changes everything once you know it.
Grab your popcorn, tissues too, and go watch 2 Hearts on Netflix. See Jacob Elordi at his most heartbreaking best.
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