Messagères de guerre

First I want to state very clearly, although this movie already has a small (about 35 or 40) number of positive reviews, a full 18% of the votes here on IMDb are "1". What does that say? Bigotry is still pervasive, and I doubt that many who voted it "1" even took the time to watch the movie.

(Edit: JAN 11th - Now with 210 reviews and about 16K votes, only 10% are "1" and the most common votes cluster around "7" and "8" which is a much better representation of the movie itself.)

Yes, it is by a black writer-director. Yes, the focus is on a battalion of black women in WW2. But it is derived from real people and real events and is a good and meaningful movie. I cannot imagine an educated and empathetic viewer finding great fault with this movie.

It is the 1940s and the war in Europe is far from being decided. One problem is the mail, soldiers are not getting letters from their families. And, families are not getting letters from their sons and daughters deployed overseas. Battalion number 6888 of black women are sent to get the mail back on track, those who sent them were sure they would fail. They had six months to unravel the mail mess contained in several full warehouses in the UK. They were given quarters that were dirty and in disrepair. In spite of things being stacked against them, they were able to do the job and in half that time allotted.

This movie isn't about how realistically or not the fighting is portrayed; it is about battalion 6888 and what they did. The end credits show some original footage of the women in the 1940s plus some snippets of a few of those women still living in modern times.

My wife and I watched it at home, streaming, after our usual Saturday night steak and wine dinner. We both give it a hearty "thumbs up."

This is not a great movie, but it's certainly watchable. And the fact that so many of the previous 141 reviewers say that they had never heard of the 6888 and what they accomplished shows that a movie needed to be made on the subject. So bravo Tyler Perry for doing this.

My one objection is that the movie never spends time telling us how these women managed to get through all that mail in only three months. That was their signal accomplishment, what made them famous, and the movie never tells us.

It does tell us that several other units had been assigned the task previously and failed, so the 6888's achievement certainly merits recognition.

The obvious parallel contrast here is *Hidden Figures*, a downright remarkable movie that does not sell its audience short, but rather takes the time to let us see how those "human calculators" accomplished what they did. It makes us admire their ingenuity and intelligence, as well as their courage and perseverance.

I suspect the women of the 6888 had these qualities as well, but we really never get to see it.

There are books on the subject. I guess I'll have to go out and read one.

Opening war scene was so infuriatingly crass that I was set off in mood of anger. From that point I was criticising the acting, the extras, the twee music backing.

It took me a while to find a character I could believe in. Then there were some but the predictable racial agenda just kept surfacing and was being over pushed.

Stereotypes and prissy script writing.

Maybe I'm becoming an old man and younger ones will enjoy the fantasy.

At least there wasn't a lecture on gender.

I also remember all those early US ww2 movies which painted the US in a completely unrealistic light. This felt similar.

The actual story is absolutely amazing, definitely one of triumph over adversity. What ruined it for me was how all the actors looked so polished and preened. If you watch the real footage at the end, there is not one scrap of makeup on the female soldiers. This made it feel unauthentic. I also found the script and some of the acting a bit woolly.

Saying that, what the actual battalion did in real life was and is incredible. It's worth a watch just to learn what they actually achieved. I just wish the film did real justice to those soldiers. I feel like they would have been a lot tougher in reality and certainly wouldn't have looked like they'd just stepped out of a beauty salon.

As a veteran and historian, the story of the 6888 Postal Service Battalion is a moving one. This movie is good, but the multitude of mistakes in the movie as well as the overprocessed look of the video grated on me for the entire film.

The overprocessing look is a matter of taste, but the mistakes in military protocol and the battle scene were avoidable. First, the initial battle scene looked like a video game and was blatantly absurd. Second, "attention" and "fall in" are not interchangeable and the proper follow up command after "dress right dress" and "cover" is "ready front", not "ready two". In addition, the use of "eyes right" and "present arms" during the review are incorrect.