The Six Triple Eight should have been about the amazing feat of an all-Black women Battalion sorting through 17 million pieces of mail, but Perry’s laziness made it a Romantic Drama.
The opening scene of a tired soldier whining his way through the war-torn trenches of San Pietro in 1943 gives the viewer a promise that this historic story will be taken seriously. But that is quickly deflated as bombs start dropping and soldiers are killed off through hilariously unrealistic effects.
Before long we are placed a year earlier into the semi- sunny “romance” of Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian) and her love interest Abram David (Gregg Sulkin) who just so happens to be white and Jewish. Now you may be thinking what does an interracial romance have to do with the only all-Black women battalion that served in Europe. Well, if you’re Tyler Perry it’s the literal engine that stores the story’s plot.
Though it is clear that the building of their romance and eventual death of Abram is what drives Lena to enlist; it is not clear why Perry feels the need to insert a romance in this story at all, when there’s so much historic context to go off. We get a lot of info about Lena’s feelings for Abram by his ghost literally haunting her throughout the movie. Yet, we barely get any real substance of why these women joined the army.
One of Perry’s best attributes is he has no trouble getting amazing actors to star in his productions. Yet, their performances always seem stunted by his one- sided vision. The Six Triple Eight is no exception when Kerry Washington takes center stage as Captain Charity Adams.
Washington’s character takes the brunt of the racist and sexist comments which is thrown around so carelessly throughout the movie that it’s hard to take seriously. This gives the dialogue a flat one-dimensional perspective that leaves little room for any nuanced conversation within the movie. It paints every white character as racist or complacent, and every black character as the victim of this racism with no real way to stand up for themselves. Unless you see a lot of grandstanding that gets cut short, by whatever racist comment Perry feels the need to insert in the story without actually flushing out the intricacies of what it meant to be Black and a woman in the army at this time as redemption.
Furthermore, Perry’s use of his supporting actors like Oprah as Mary McLeod Bethune, Susan Sarandon as Eleanor Roosevelt, Shanice Williams as Johnnie Mae and Sarah Jeffery as Dolores Washington is downright abhorrent. Perry is too focused on a grand love story that was never there to put any real substance into the characters that actually shaped this historic event. He steps right into his stereotypical writing when it comes to Johnnie Mae, portraying her as an ignorant, comic relief because of her weight. While simultaneously painting Dolores as the voice of reason in the group because she is light skin.
He also makes Eleanor Roosevelt seem like a loopy ditz and just places Mary McLeod Bethune (Oprah) in the movie for the purpose of telling us why the 6888th Battalion is qualified for the job instead of showing us. We do get some facts about the process used to sort through the mail in the last 20 minutes of the movie. I just wish we got more information about the women and their sisterhood, rather than the love story between Lena and Ahram and then Lena and Hugh Bell (Jay Reeves) which Perry forced the story to stand on.
Perry has stated that the script only took him two weeks to write, and it is evident in the way he struggles to show us who the women of the 6888th battalion was and lazily tells us what he assumes them to be. It truly makes you wonder if this story would have been better utilized in the hands of someone who more closely resembled the women of the story.
What did you think?
Loved it
Hated it
So/So
Great review!