American Soldiers in World War II had trouble getting their letters from home. *sigh* Some WWII films are about the holocaust; some WWII films are about the bombing of Pearl Harbor; some are about D-Day; some are about the plot to assassinate Hitler … and some are about snail mail.
Well, gosh, we can’t all take on perilous fights; what would we compare them to?
Writer/director Tyler Perry kills off the love interest in the opening of the film, which seems a rather short-sighted choice, but, hey, it’s your film. The couple was going to have issues anyway. Flashbacks show us the couple in 1940 Philadelphia – he’s Jewish and she’s Black and if you think that’s gonna fly in pre-Loving America, well, you’ve got one heckuva imagination.
Thankfully, the film spares us the majority of the racism that would have accompanied such. It didn’t want to go there. Well, not yet at least.
Getting encouragement beyond the grave, Lena (Ebony Obsidian) enlists to do her part. I’m not sure the timeline really works here, but, shrug, I’ll let it go. Lena joins The Six Triple Eight, a platoon of all-Black women who train for combat and action, just like the men, but are given no orders.
Meanwhile, some celebrities show up playing famous people (poorly):
Oprah Winfrey as Mary McLeod Bethune
Susan Sarandon as Eleanor Roosevelt
Sam Waterston as Franklin Roosevelt
I have no idea how historically accurate the scenes with these jokers are, but they get the 6888 deployed to Glasgow to sort through and deliver three-years’ worth of rat-eaten GI mail.
And it wouldn’t be a film about Black people in WWII without some choice racism, the best provided by Dean Norris. I imagine many American commanders at the time would have struggled on whether to take a racist or a sexist position when dealing with a platoon 
of Black women.
While amiable enough, The Six Triple Eight is unimaginative and ho-hum. I was hoping for something much harder hitting or at least something that would make me really cheer on Black women, especially in light of the November election. This wasn’t the panacea I had yearned for.
To sum up, this film is overlong and dull, skirts genuine questions of racism, pulls all its punches, and takes the tamest view of WWII imaginable. Hence … Congratulations, Tyler, this is your best film to date. And you didn’t even have to dress in drag, which would have made an awful WWII film. The Six Triple Eight is empowering and tells a unique feminist story -albeit a comparatively soft one- at a time and place where Black women were next to invisible. Films like this should exist. Stories like this should be told. Just don’t expect me to call it Schindler’s List, ok?
The women of the 6888
Got the President involved in their fate
The plan did entail
To deliver the mail
The Nazis? They’ll just have to wait
Rated PG-13, 127 Minutes
Director: Tyler Perry
Writer: Kevin Hymel, Tyler Perry
Genre: Women at War
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Mail carriers, feminists
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Action junkies
