The most interesting moment in Tyler Perry’s new film “The Six Triple Eight”, which was released on Netflix a few months ago, is its epilogue part, which briefly shows a series of interviews and archival records. Yes, there were really many African women who joined the US Army during the World War II, and these ladies actually did something important for the American soldiers during that time.

It is too bad that the rest of the movie is not so interesting compared to that. We all know that Perry, who also wrote the screenplay based on Kevin M. Hymel’s nonfiction book “Fighting a Two-Front War”, is not a very good storyteller, but the story is riddled with broad clichés and stereotypes in addition to being quite uneven in terms of tone and mood, and this frequently distracts us from the fairly good efforts from the main cast members.

The main subject of the movie is the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-African American female battalion during the World War II. The story begins with how a young African American woman named Lena Derriecott (Ebony Obsidian) becomes a member of the 6888th Battalion in 1944. She had a young Jewish lover in her hometown in Pennsylvania, but, alas, he died not long after joining the US Air Force, and, after grieving on his death for a while, she eventually decides to join the US Army.

As going to the army training camp in Georgia, Lena comes to befriend a number of young African American women also going to the same destination. Many of them know too well that the US Army will probably keep them and other African American female soldiers from going to Europe due to racism and racial segregation, but they come to join the US Army for various reasons anyway, and they are willing to do their best for becoming good soldiers.

Of course, right from their first day, they come to see how difficult and demanding it will be for all of them. Their battalion leader, Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington), firmly emphasizes on how they must be always exemplary in front of those many white officers and generals out there, and Lena and her fellow recruits soon find themselves struggling a lot under Major Adams’ strict supervision.

Nevertheless, Lena does not lose her will and determination at all despite that, because, what do you know, the spirit of her dead lover keeps her going from time to time. This is just one of many blatant dramatic devices used by Perry’s screenplay, and he does not even seem to know how to use this utterly clichéd method more effectively.

In addition, Perry’s screenplay tries to juggle a bit too many stuffs within the 2-hour running time. Besides Lena’s main plot, there is a subplot involved with how Major Adams must deal with the racism from her superiors day by day, and then there is a possible romantic subplot between Lena and one African American male soldier who quickly finds himself smitten with her. Furthermore, there is also a subplot involved with how a concerned old mother comes to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sam Waterston) to handle the literally accumulating issue with all those letters and packages sent from thousands of American soldiers or their family members in US.

When Major Adams and her African female soldiers are eventually sent to a city in Scottland in early 1945 for handling this serious mail delivery problem, the movie seems more focused than before, but Perry only throws more clichés and plot contrivances along the story without generating enough human interest for us. While Lena and many of her fellow African American soldiers are not fleshed out enough to engage us, Major Adams is mainly defined by her defiantly unflappable attitude, though she comes to show a bit of her humanity during a few obligatory dramatic moments including the one where she boldly defies her racist superior later in the story.

As getting more distracted and disinterested during my viewing, I only came to observe how much the main cast members are struggling to enhance whatever they are required to handle. Kerry Washington has some juicy moments as your average no-nonsense leader, but she also often finds herself limited by her rather flat character. Ebony Obsidian and several other actresses including Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, Shanice Shantay, and Sarah Jeffery try their best, but they are usually required to fill their respective spots without much else to do. In case of the more notable cast members in the film, Dean Norris, Sam Waterson, Susan Sarandon, and Oprah Winfrey just come and go in their brief appearance, and Norris is unfortunately saddled with a thankless task of delivering all those unpleasant racist insults whenever he appears on the screen.

On the whole, “The Six Triple Eight”, which recently received a Best Song Oscar nomination (This is incidentally Diane Warren’s 16th Oscar nomination – and she has not won yet while she received the Honorary Oscar in 2022), is well-intentioned but ultimately disappointing in many aspects. In my humble opinion, these exceptional ladies deserve better than this, and I can only hope that their extraordinary story will be presented more effectively by any better storyteller out there.