TRASH IN MY EYE No. 1 of 2025 (No. 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux
The Six Triple Eight (2024)
Running time: 127 minutes (2 hours, 7 minutes)
MPA – PG-13 for language including racial slurs, thematic material and some war violence
DIRECTOR: Tyler Perry
WRITER: Tyler Perry (based on the magazine article by Kevin Hymel)
PRODUCERS: Tyler Perry, Angi Bones, Nicole Avant, Carlota Espinosa, Keri Selig, and Tony L. Strickland
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Michael Watson (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Maysie Hoy
COMPOSER: Aaron Zigman
DRAMA/HISTORICAL/WAR
Starring: Kerry Washington, Ebony Obsidian, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, Shanice Shantay, Sarah Jeffery, Pepi Sonuga, Moriah Brown, Jeanté Godlock, Dean Norris, Sam Waterston, Susan Sarandon, Oprah Winfrey, Gregg Sulkin, Donna Biscoe, and Baadja-Lyne Odums
SUMMARY OF THE REVIEW:
The Six Triple Eight is one of the most beautiful and powerful films about World War II that has ever been made.
Its true story about a battalion of Black women soldiers who broke the logjam of mail that kept overseas American servicemen and their families back home from connecting will bring tears to your eyes
The Six Triple Eight is one of the year's best films, and Kerry Washington gives the heroic performance of her career.
The Six Triple Eight is a 2024 wartime drama and historical film from writer-director Tyler Perry. The film is based on the article, “WAC Corporal Lena Derriecott and the 6888th Central Postal Battalion,” written by Kevin M. Hymel and published in the February 2019 issue of WWII History Magazine. The article details the contributions of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-Black and all-female battalion, in World War II.
The film is a Netflix Original,” and it began streaming on the service December 20, 2024, after a limited theatrical run that began December 6, 2024. The Six Triple Eight the movie focuses on battalion of Black women soldiers who go overseas and take on the forces that are keeping American service personnel and their families back home from simply exchanging mail.
The Six Triple Eight introduces high school students and longtime friends, Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian), a Black girl, and Abram David (Gregg Sulkin), a Jewish White boy. They are reckoning with the difficulties of their budding romance in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, a small town outside Philadelphia, in the year 1942. David is enlisting in the U.S. military in order to serve in World War II, and he wants to be a pilot. David wants Lena to wait for him to return from the war when he will propose marriage to her, and, in the meantime, he gives her a promise ring.
Meanwhile, in rural West Virginia, a mother waits everyday for news about her two sons who are serving overseas in the war. She never gets any mail from her sons, and she later discovers that this is a problem all over the country. It turns out that there is a terrible backlog of undelivered mail. The mother approaches First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Susan Sarandon), and she approaches her husband, President Franklin Roosevelt (Sam Waterston), and philanthropist and civil rights activist, Mary McLeod Bethune (Oprah Winfrey), to solve the overseas military mail problem.
Meanwhile, Lena has received terrible news, and it spurs her to join the Women's Army Corps (WAC). She travels to Georgia for basic training with the 6888th battalion – also known as “the Six Triple Eight” – where she meets her battalion commander, the indomitable Captain Chasity Addams (Kerry Washington). Despite being well trained, Capt. Adams and her battalion are never given any orders to serve from the War Department. Then, thanks to the efforts of the Roosevelts and Miss Bethune, the 6888th becomes “The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.”
Now, they must travel to Glasgow, Scotland where they have six months to sort through 17 million pieces of undelivered mail and packages. The must fight, however, a war on all fronts, fighting segregation and racism at home and abroad. Many White military commanders, officers, and soldiers do not believe they can sort through the backlog. Plus, some of these crackas will do everything to stop the Six Triple Eight from being successful.
If you, dear readers, wanted to watch World War II films based on on true events, you can find over eight decades of Hollywood films, including everything from recent films like Saving Private Ryan (1998), Hacksaw Ridge (2016), and Dunkirk (2017) to golden oldies like Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). However, the those films focus on White servicemen.
When it comes to the service of Black personnel during WWII, there is a virtual Hollywood wall of silence that has only rarely been broken by such films as the HBO television movie, The Tuskegee Airmen (1995); Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna (2008), and the George Lucas-financed Red Tails (2012). Director Budd Boetticher's Red Ball Express (1952) is about a racially integrated platoon, but the film's leads are White males.
Tyler Perry, a filmmaker whose TV and film work, has been reviled by both Black and White critics and detractors, breaks the wall of silence that exists in front of the story of African-American WWII personnel. He has done it with The Six Triple Eight, the first such film in over a decade.
The film is filled with star-making turns by a cast of young African-American actresses who could see this movie launch their careers. Ebony Obsidian as Lena Derriecott and Shanice Shantay as Johnnie Mae Burton are the most obvious, but though they shine, all the actors make the most of their roles in this film. I must say Dean Norris kills it as the Southern racist cracka-ass General Holt. However, Kerry Washington practically devours this film with her power-move turn as the wily, strong, survivor, Captain (later Major) Chasity Adams. In some ways, Adams is the co-lead with Derriecott, but there other times when the following point is clear. The real-life “Six Triple Eight” probably would have not survived without Adams, and The Six Triple Eight the film probably would not survive without Washington as Adams.
I like that Tyler Perry's direction captures the desperation of families on the home front and of the service personnel overseas who are not connecting because the mail isn't being delivered. Perry does not need to summon his usual melodramatic tropes to convey this to his audience, nor does he. Perry plainly states what his audience can clearly understand; the mail backlog is a desperate situation.
And what better way to portray how much the racist and segregated system was at work against the women of the 6888th than to detail how some thought it was more important to sabotage the women of this battalion than to actually let them do their jobs and get the mail through. Perry could have fallen back time and time again on depictions of verbal and physical racist violence, yet he didn't. The word, “nigger,” does not make many appearance in The Six Triple Eight. Perry merely had to show that in war we are sometimes our own worst enemy, and he showed the white devils who were against the “Six Triple Eight” in all their infamy.
The Six Triple Eight is Tyler Perry's best drama since 2010's For Colored Girls. Although there will likely be no Oscar nods for this film, The Six Triple Eight does not need them. It is more important that a Black filmmaker gets a chance or takes the opportunity to pierce the wall of silence about the honorable and heroic service of Black men and Black women during World War II. The Six Triple Eight is the soaring symphony that, at least for now, shatters that silence.
10 of 10
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
You can read Kevin M. Hymel's original article about the 6888th, "WAC Corporal Lena Derriecott and the 6888th Central Postal Battalion," here.
The text is copyright © 2024 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.
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