It feels like centuries pass before Eleanor Roosevelt shows up in Tyler Perry’s film The Six Triple Eight. Playing her is Susan Sarandon, noticing a woman standing outside the White House for days on end. The woman tells the former First Lady in America and FDR (Sam Waterston) that there’s a backlog in the mail. The mail they’re waiting for are from the men fighting several European fronts during the Second World War. Up to the task in the titular battalion, the only battalion in the army for racialized women (one of the battalion’s members is Afro-Hispanic). Leading them are Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washignton) and Captain Campbell (Milauna Jackson). The battalion makes do with the little they have. 

Cue the montage of the female soldiers turning an abandoned church in Glasgow into a post office. They do all this with the white officers not giving them the respect that they deserve. One of those officers is General Halt (Dean Norris), whose underlings look like Peter Thiel. There is an irony to this film, one about Black women working hard without getting any recognition. The irony here is that we see these Black women under the lens of Georgia /Hollywood’s laziest director. The Six Triple Eight has one montage of many of the characters doing things between Kerry Washington’s ‘inspiring’ speeches. During these speeches in The Six Triple Eight, Washington is always on the verge of tears a la mid-career Katharine Hepburn.

Six Triple Eight

I know that Kerry Washington most likely paid the light bill for The Six Triple Eight‘s production but still. She is just one of many supporting characters, inspiration for real life women fighting the war. And yet, the film reduces her and its many characters to archetypes of fictional Black women on screen. One of them is Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay ‘Williams’), who has to be the one that others call ‘unclassy’. She does have a good line about her not bragging about her ‘skill’, the film’s Chekhov’s gun. Spoiler alert, Johnnie Mae sings when two fellow members of her battalion die because of a road explosion. The interlude reminds me of Shantay’s turn in The Wiz Live. Dorothy is a role using Stantay’s talents much better. 

Either way, the supporting cast and the stunt casting in The Six Triple Eight distract from the film’s protagonist, Lena Derriecott. Ebony Obsidian plays that character, fighting the war to avenge the death of a white soldier he loves. Lena’s story is an interesting one, one that the film reminds us of before it forgets it again. Obsidian makes it work – in some lights she has an iPhone face but she has hints of period visibility. She and the younger cast members feel undercooked on screen, like they needed a few more rehearsal sessions. But even if they don’t click all the time, it’s magical during the moments when they do. The cast’s younger members have a lot of potential that I hope they eventually live up to.

Watch The Six Triple Eight on Netflix.