The Six Triple Eight (2024) review

Dir. Tyler Perry

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

If Hallmark made war movies, they’d probably look a lot like Tyler Perry’s The Six Triple Eight.

This isn’t so much a criticism as it is a testament to Perry’s growing evolution as a director. The filmmaker known for about four-or-five too many Madea movies, and the occasional unrelated drama, hasn’t spent much time working on an epic scale. In total contrast, his films are usually characterized by intimate interiors, a handful of characters, and a lot of Clint Eastwoodian lighting, framing, and acting that suggests the first take was good enough.

However, since signing a deal with Netflix, Perry has branched out and taken more creative risks without the looming threat of lowly box office returns. His film A Jazzman’s Blues was one of his most accomplished, revolving around the relationship between a Black jazz musician and a biracial woman, both outcasts in their Georgia community.

Now, The Six Triple Eight has Perry bringing light to one of countless World War II stories that never got told: the inspiring story of the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black U.S. Women’s Army Corps.

During the height of the war, the Battalion was sent to Europe to fix the broken postal service. The backlog of letters was likely in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, with soldiers’ letters to their loved ones lying dormant in transit. Families had no way of knowing if their loved ones were still alive. Morale was low all around, which led to the Battalion’s instantly memorable motto: “No mail, low morale.”

Perry’s film revolves around Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian), a young Black woman whose relationship with a white Jewish man quietly infuriates her mother. He’s shipped out to war, and dies very early in combat, prompting Lena to join the Army to defeat Hitler. Upon arrival, she realizes that The Women’s Army Corps. (WAC) must work twice as hard and fight three battles: the battle of being female, the battle of being Black, and the battle against a foreign enemy. Her commanding officer, Major Charity Adams (an impassioned Kerry Washington), fights for the women she leads, but rules with an iron fist, informing the women at every turn that the racism they will face from fellow soldiers will be as oppressive as the training itself.

Lena befriends a handful of recognizable archetypes, such as the loud and rebellious female solider (Shanice Shantay), who is looking for a spouse while on the frontlines. Shantay looks like a young Octavia Spencer, and has a few moments where she shines, but Perry’s script hamfists many of the supporting players into easily defined boxes. While the first half of the film is centered on Lena’s arrival and initially frosty relationship with Major Adams, the second half focuses on the women’s seemingly impossible task of gathering and sorting the thousands upon thousands of letters. General Halt (Dean Norris boasting a very strange accent) is their leader; a callous racist, who forces the women to work in squalor, without heat and other amenities, practically setting them up for failure. Even when a chaplain is sent to the women, his primary duty is to spy on them and report back to high-ranking officials, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sam Waterston).

Cinematographer Michael Watson’s visuals give The Six Triple Eight the look of a novel come to life. It has that soft, warm aesthetic, where even the battles favor polish over grit. It’s not a flaw, for this is a story less about physical battle than the color barriers the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion must overcome. When a movie can be shortchanged in its plot by saying “watching women sort mail” could equally be as exciting as “watching paint dry,” Perry overcomes some self-inflected pacing issues in the first third to give way to a stirring and satisfying epic. In particular, the last 45 minutes effectively land the plane and precede a deservingly honorific epilogue for another story we all should’ve at least heard something about in school.

Starring: Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Shanice Shantay, Dean Norris, Sam Waterston, Oprah Winfrey, Susan Sarandon, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, and Sarah Jeffery. Directed by: Terry Perry.