THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT - Mark Reviews Movies

The Six Triple Eight, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2024

Writer/director Tyler Perry might spend too much time and exert too much effort explaining why it's important that the characters of The Six Triple Eight do what they do. The mission here seems like a simple, if not especially an easy, one: to deliver the mail to and from American soldiers overseas in Europe during World War II. Without word from home or messages getting to loved ones, morale depletes, and diminished morale does not often make for effective soldiers.

The people in charge of this mission have their own reasons for accomplishing it, too, beyond the apparent aid it will bring to the war effort. This group, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, is made up of women, and some of them have husbands, sons, relatives, and others fighting. They understand how important it is to know what is happening to those men, as well as to know that they understand the love and support coming from home.

The battalion, though, is also made up entirely of Black women, who have been put to this task as something of a last resort and, in the mind of its commander, an insult. Military brass doesn't believe these women can do much, if anything, and they're certain this job will exceed the battalion's capacity.

Perry's screenplay repeats this sentiment and its obvious counter over and over, until it seems as if the characters spend more time having racism hurled at them and rising above such ignorance than actually accomplishing the mission. The truth is, even by the movie's own account, the Six Triple Eight, as the battalion was known by, was incredibly efficient, thorough, and fast in their task. That reality, apparently, doesn't make for good drama, and Perry, who has a tendency to create as much melodrama as possible in his movies, can't simply let the story of the Six Triple Eight and its members stand on their own merits.

Instead, the movie keeps the stakes, the characters' personal investment in the task, and the number of obstacles they face as high as possible. It's so long before the battalion even arrives in Europe to do the job they've been assigned to do that it really starts to feel as if Perry has little interest in the mission itself.

Instead, we meet Lena (Ebony Obsidian), a future recruit to the Women's Army Corps (WAC), at home and in love with a white man named Abram (Gregg Sulkin). There's a lot of prejudice or skepticism aimed the couple's way, but they endure and hope to continue the progression of their relationship after Abram returns home from combat. Instead, he's killed in battle, leaving Lena to mourn and, after seeing visions of the man she still loves, decide to join WAC "to fight Hitler."

Lena is trained by then-Capt. and later Maj. Charity Adams (Kerry Washington), who wants to prove that she and other Black women like her can do any job and accomplish any mission put to them. We also meet an eclectic group of fellow WAC soldiers, who become close to Lena, but all of them are overshadowed by Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay), the boldly outspoken comic relief of the movie who says what none of the other women dare to say about how poorly the battalion is treated.

When the mission finally arrives, we've endured some questionable political exposition (with Sam Waterson as Franklin Roosevelt and Susan Sarandon covered in multiple makeup pieces to play his wife Eleanor). Lena, though, has endured the loss of the man she loves, an extended sequence of basic training, more hallucinations of Abram, a ship journey across the Atlantic to Scotland, and a gradual shift toward Adams becoming the story's central figure. Washington is good in the role—tough with her soldiers, publicly putting an agreeable attitude with superior officers even in the face of overt prejudice, privately confiding in right-hand woman Capt. Campbell (Milauana Jackson) about how frustrating constantly being looked down upon, regardless of what she has and could accomplish, is.

The movie keeps putting such barriers in the way, often concocted by the appropriately named Gen. Halt (Dean Norris), who doubts Adams and her battalion or, for that matter, any Black woman should be in the military in any capacity. There are plenty of righteous speeches against these men, building to one aimed right at the racist general's face. Sure, it's satisfying on a basic level to watch Adams and her women prove everyone else wrong, but it's a long course of repetitive abuse, harassment, obstacles, and speechifying to finally get there.

It all gets in the way of the actual accomplishment of the Six Triple Eight, too, which is presented with the monumental task of processing 17 million letters from various, often moving soldiers to the expanse of the United States and vice versa. It seems like a logistical nightmare, but in The Six Triple Eight, it's merely what's happening in the background as Perry makes broader and more obvious points repeatedly.

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