The Six Triple Eight (2024, dir. Tyler Perry)

by Jack Martin | Dec 19, 2024

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 127 mins

UK Distributor: Netflix

UK Release Date: 20 December 2024

WHO’S IN THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT?

Kerry Washington, Sam Waterston, Susan Sarandon, Oprah Winfrey, Ebony Obsidian, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, Shanice Shantay, Sarah Jeffery, Pepi Sonuga, Jay Reeves, Jeanté Godlock, Moriah Brown, Baadja-Lyne Odums, Gregg Sulkin, Dean Norris

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Tyler Perry (director, writer, producer), Nicole Avant, Angi Bones, Elan Dassani, Carlota Espinosa, Kim Mulligan, Keri Seligand Tony L. Strickland (producers), Aaron Zigman (composer), Michael Watson (cinematographer), Maysie Hoy (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

During the Second World War, a battalion of female African-American soldiers breaks numerous barriers…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT?

Across his varied career, the multi-hyphenate creative entrepreneur Tyler Perry has dabbled in numerous topics that he evidently knows very little about. Whether it’s hard-hitting themes such as colourism and domestic abuse – and even, on more than one occasion, HIV/AIDS – or seemingly simple subjects like book publishing or basic human romance, Perry has shown himself to be inept at conveying a wide variety of things in any kind of realistic or even dramatically engaging, all while further proving to be a filmmaker of questionable production and writing quality that has arguably done more damage to Black filmmakers than truly helped them (just ask Spike Lee if you’ve got a few hours to kill).

With all of that in mind, the fact that he has been placed in charge of bringing to the screen the largely untold story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion – better known as the Six Triple Eight – is mind-boggling. It is dangerous territory for Perry, for he risks fumbling the biggest chance yet for the battalion, which was the only predominantly Black female troop to be deployed overseas during the Second World War, to have its time in the spotlight after decades of obscurity. One false move, which at this point is unavoidable for someone like Perry, and not only does he tarnish the Six Triple Eight’s genuinely respectable legacy, but he also alienates those who have been fighting all these years to have their stories heard by the masses.

So, how does he do? Well, let me put it this way: The Six Triple Eight is exactly what you’d expect a Tyler Perry movie about a real-life troop of female soldiers to be. Which is to say, not very good, and often laughable in aspects of its overall execution. Having said that, it still just might be his best film to date – but that really isn’t saying much.

The film takes place during the war (naturally), as morale among American soldiers is apparently at an all-time low, due to the lack of correspondence with their loved ones back home. Meanwhile, back on home soil, young Philadelphia student Lena Derriecott King (Ebony Obsidian) decides to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps after the death of her handsome white love interest Abram (Gregg Sulkin) whilst in combat. She and fellow recruits like loud-mouthed Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay) are soon whipped into shape by the corps’ commanding officer, Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington), who is eager to be given the opportunity to prove herself among her casually racist white contemporaries. She soon gets that chance, but not the one she had hoped for, as Adams and her battalion are tasked with sorting entire hangars of unsent mail to and from the battlefields within a six-month window, which they are sent over to Glasgow, Scotland – which, try as it might, always looks suspiciously like one of many compounds at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, Georgia – in order to complete their mission.

You would think that a movie where much of it has to do with women sifting through mail would be rather uninteresting, and yet… you’d be completely right. Perry isn’t a good enough writer or director to inject his scenes with much life outside of the unintentionally humorous slip-ups, from fascinatingly clunky exposition dialogue to some odd acting choices to some wild tonal shifts (many of which occur during the opening ten minutes alone).

There’s even an ultimately unnecessary set of scenes involving Susan Sarandon as Eleanor Roosevelt, in which she is given the most unflattering wig and fake teeth combo since Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody, bringing the already sluggish movie to a grinding halt every single time the film awkwardly cuts back to her at the White House, occasionally accompanied by Sam Waterston as FDR and by Oprah Winfrey in a one-scene role as civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, both of whom similarly look and sometimes act like they’re merely performing in a sketch on Drunk History.

That, incidentally, would be more entertaining to watch, for outside of Perry’s usual mistakes, the film is surprisingly dull. There isn’t much dramatic weight to the narrative, nor are there really any major stakes (it’s all taking place around the end of the war, so it’s not like the US Army is in a prime position to let the enemy bombard them), since the characters it chooses to focus on are either your typical bland protagonist or the borderline obnoxious comic relief who always speaks as though a laugh-track is accompanying their dialogue.

Of the cast, Kerry Washington comes away with the most dignity, for she gives a commanding performance that is certainly a lot of capital-A acting most of the time, but she is such a compelling presence that you honestly wish the movie was much more about her character instead of the far less compelling ones we’re spending more time with for some reason. But even Washington isn’t enough to fill the screen with a lot of underwhelming drama that hardly ever amounts to anything substantial, which for a film meant to celebrate a very real battalion that did more interesting things than the movie perhaps lets on feels like a mark against their memory.

Still, though, credit where credit is due, for unlike most other Tyler Perry movies, The Six Triple Eight does at least feel like a movie – not a particularly good movie, but one that you could actually envision belonging on the big screen (that is, if Netflix wasn’t distributing it). There is some decent cinematography and production design to behold, and in some scenes like a very All Quiet on the Western Front opening, which is otherwise littered with bad CG explosions aplenty, you can see much of the budget being put to effective use in each frame.

Admittedly, that’s not much to highlight, but believe me when I say that this movie is nowhere near as incompetently made as some of the ones that Perry has become known for (hell, he’s released two other films this year alone – Netflix’s Mea Culpa and Prime Video’s Divorce in the Black – that are far more shoddily executed than The Six Triple Eight).

In the end, it isn’t all that shocking that Tyler Perry hasn’t been able to do this real-life story much justice. However, he’s at least had the decency to have it not be quite as bad as it could have been – so, that’s something, I guess.

SO, TO SUM UP…

The Six Triple Eight is a stale and rather dull attempt by filmmaker Tyler Perry to honour the real-life battalion at its centre, which despite slightly better production values than usual for the writer-director, as well as a committed turn by Kerry Washington, still can’t overcome its clunky and often unintentionally humorous execution, which ends up doing more damage to the actual unit’s admittedly worthy legacy.