The Six Triple Eight

The story of the only all-Black, all-female battalion to enter the European theater in World War II deserved a better teller than Tyler Perry. The writer, director, playwright, and actor, best known for his “Madea” comedies, adapts a 2019 article written by Kevin M. Hymel for WWII History magazine, which chronicled the trials and ultimate triumph of the hitherto unsung 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, which was tasked to sort through a backlog of 17 million pieces of undelivered US Army mail. Kerry Washington (Ray, The Last King of Scotland, Django Unchained) heads up a strong cast of newcomers as Captain Charity Adams, the first African-American woman to become an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and was the regiment's commanding officer. Ebony Obsidian (If Beale Street Could Talk) plays Lena Derriecott King, one of the last surviving members of the Six Triple Eight who was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022 on behalf of the unit. King lived to be 100 and consulted on this film.

The movie is structured around King's story of falling in love with a Jewish classmate who enlists in the Air Force and is shot down shortly after shipping out. She decides to become a WAAC and heads to Georgia for basic training. There, she meets her fellow privates as well as Captain Adams, and she struggles through the usual boot camp sequences and scenes of racist treatment by white army personnel seen in many other pictures. Things get more interesting when, after repeatedly being denied an assignment overseas, Adams and her unit are sent to Scotland to deal with the issue of undelivered mail, which Eleanor Roosevelt made a priority after learning how low morale was getting both overseas and on the homefront because soldiers and their loved ones hadn't received any communications. Eleanor Roosevelt is played by Susan Sarandon with an amazing set of false teeth, while Sam Waterston plays FDR. Oprah Winfrey plays civil rights activist and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, Mary McLeod Bethune. In a scene of near-comical bad acting, these three movie stars convince racist caricature General Halt (Dean Norris in a performance worthy of 1970s-era Clifton James) to put Captain Adams and her girls to work.

Perry writes his script like a by-the-numbers overwrought TV movie, and he directs each scene as if it were the film's emotional climax. Despite the $70m budget, the special effects look like they were done by a group of high schoolers using consumer-level software. The cast does their best to imbue Perry's two-dimensional characters with genuine humanity, and Washington pulls off the many speeches she's required to make: movies of this sort can always be counted on for a big "Oscar speech," but this film saddles its lead actor with five! There are countless stories about unsung Black women throughout history that need to be told, so we should be grateful even for a subpar picture like this. Still, let's hope we get more movies like Hidden Figures and less like The Six Triple Eight.