Review of The Six Triple Eight, directed by Tyler Perry

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this page through the depths of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I used to be a professional film critic at an online outlet. I ended up leaving that job to do my own thing, as I realized my passion was BIPOC and international cinema, which publications tend to avoid more due to profitability. This is how my blog came to be at the end of the day!

That said, I recently (at the time of typing this) fell on a period of unexpected unemployment. I took a look at my finances and realized I had the golden opportunity to wait it out for a bit while I applied to jobs, which meant I’m spending a bit more time working on the blog before I re-enter the corporate world.

I’ve been catching up on my movies, chilling, freelancing, and writing a few books here and there. It’s a time, even though it’s only been a month. I also have been trying to go outside of my comfort zone more, so I’m watching a lot more movies that I wouldn’t have.

The Six Triple Eight is a movie that does fall within my taste. I love pre-1950 American history a little too much, especially through the prism of racial minorities. When I first saw this movie was coming out, I was very interested in the story it was telling, as it’s not one that’s within the mainstream narratives of WWII and who fought in it.

That said, I have also somehow never seen a Tyler Perry movie before. I watch a lot of African American and Black directors generally, but never got around to a Tyler Perry movie. I do remember laughing though when I saw A Strange Loop on Broadway and it made fun of Tyler Perry movies, even though I myself probably didn’t fully get the reference.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much before I bore you to death.

The stories of a group of women in an all-Black unit during World War II, which was sent abroad to sort mail.

I found this to be a pretty straightforward movie plot-wise. We first meet a white woman in West Virginia who waits for her sons overseas to send her letters, but it turns out that no one is really getting letters from any of the troops. No one is going through the mail in the war efforts, meaning so many people were in limbo hearing from their loved ones.

We then meet our protagonist: Lena. She’s in high school, and lives in a very Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia. Despite the white girls disapproving, she’s best friends with her childhood buddy Abram, a white Jewish boy, and she’ll happily jump into his backseat for a ride through the town.

Abram has to enlist, as he is a bit older than her, and they have a moment together at his going away party. Lena is devastated when he leaves and looks for letters from him every day, as she knows he’s writing them for sure, but they never come. Only news comes when his father shows up at her home: Abram died in the war effort.

Lena is destroyed by this, and ultimately decides to enlist herself once she graduates from high school. She does just that and is sent to Georgia for training camp with other Black women. They all have their own reasons for enlisting, but Lena almost breaks from how difficult it is. Her captain, Charity Adams, is notoriously tough as well, but her battalion isn’t even given any orders from the higher ups.

When the West Virginia woman personally appeals to Eleanor Roosevelt, the group is sent abroad to sort out mail from the war effort. Finally the Black Women’s Army Corps has a purpose, but even when they’re sent abroad, they’re not given good accommodations to work within and their commanding officer, Halt, is a racist.

Now Major Adams, Charity and her Captain are told they have six months to fix this. They have two years’ worth of mail to get through, and no one actually wants them to succeed here. The girls come together to fix up the rat-infested place they’re given, and they get to work. They’re dutifully sorting through the mail, but we see Lena cracking throughout this process as she imagines Abram next to her.

She breaks down when she sees how the dog tags are broken down, and she tells her story. This gets the girls going even harder, knowing this could make someone’s day, although the mail is told it’s undeliverable. They are also asked to host African-American soldiers, and Lena meets a man we saw her with earlier: Hugh. That’s her future husband, but for now Lena isn’t over Abram.

More problems arise while sorting the mail, as well as the racism they face from their superiors. Charity especially experiences the racism, but she tells her girls to fight within reason. Abram’s letter to Lena is found in the pile eventually, but this is overshadowed by the fact two of their girls are lost to a bomb while with a truck of mail.

Lena gets to visit Abram’s grave during their funeral, then decides to live because he told her he wanted her too. Halt shows up with an inspection force, and he doesn’t like what he sees (basic living conditions) and thinks the girls are doing nothing. He promises to fire Charity and put a white male in her spot, but she refuses to step down.

He tries to take her down, but sees his own unit cheering the women on when their mail arrives. The girls went through all of the mail in a month and a half, then were sent to France to do the same. We learn Lena marries Hugh, then see the women in real life and how they were finally acknowledged by the government and military.

Overall Thoughts

I think this was a solid movie overall. It’s an important movie because of its subject matter, even though the people who should probably watch it the most are the ones who would see what it’s about and look away.

Anyways, I also think that the film isn’t the best one in general. It covers the bases and has an emotional story, but there’s something about it that I can’t entirely put my finger on. It’s missing something, which made it feel slightly hollow to me. Maybe it needed a bit more life than that movie magic.

It feels slightly sanitized, but then again, I feel this way about a handful of war movies. This one though kind of feels like it’s going through a checklist of what it should be, not what it could be.

Regardless, I say watch this if you’re interested in the movie. As I said, it is quite important, and these are women who aren’t acknowledged enough already. I’m glad the film was made.

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