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Kerry Washington leads a women’s postal battalion on a project for this World War II drama.
By Lisa Kennedy
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In Tyler Perry’s World War II drama “The Six Triple Eight,” Oprah Winfrey looks like humanitarian Mary McLeod Bethune. Susan Sarandon (with large helicopters) arrives as Eleanor Roosevelt, the friend of Bethune, the first girl in the United States. Together, Roosevelt and Bethune convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sam Waterston) to turn an angry general into black infantrymen to deal with the mountains of undelivered mail, to and from infantrymen, found in airplane hangars in Scotland.
There’s prestige aplenty in Perry’s drama about the only Black, all-female Women’s Army Corps unit serving in Europe: the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. But it is Kerry Washington as Maj. Charity Adams, and Ebony Obsidian as Pvt. Lena Derriecott King, who command our attention.
Major Adams leads 855 women on a six-month project to move 17 million moldy, rat-eaten and blood-stained packages and letters. The film, Perry’s most productive in balancing her gifts as an artist with her artistic aspirations, is broken down into part of the Kevin M. Hymel article that encouraged her: compressing events, creating composite characters, and transforming an interracial friendship into a love story between Lena. and Abram (Gregg Sulkin). ), which led him to volunteer.
The drama lands many of the beats of the Greatest Generation genre and its subgenre: Black service members battling on two fronts. But familiarity doesn’t halt it being illuminating and affecting. What initially strikes Major Adams as a menial assignment at best, and a setup for failure at its bigoted worst, becomes a near-sacred operation. And when it does, the film finds a reach-for-your-Kleenex grace.
The Six Triple EightRated PG-13 for language including racial slurs, thematic material and some war violence. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
An earlier edition of this review incorrectly stated the number of women who participated in the project led by Major Adams. It’s 855, not 850.
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