‘The Six Triple Eight’ is a rousing war drama which focuses not on what is happening in battle but on a group of black women who themselves play an indispensable role in the war effort by pioneering the seemingly impossible role of sorting through and delivering (where others have failed) a backlog of 17 million letters between the servicemen and their families. Tyler Perry’s drama is very much in the mode of ‘Hidden Figures’ in terms of the way it addresses questions of those stories which the history books have not written about and which are only now, belatedly, being told.

The unit is led by the indomitable Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington) with a rod of iron, yet underneath this tough veneer is a strong sense of compassion and justice, with Adams standing up against the racism and abuse that is presented here as endemic, as when in one pivotal scene white officers, at a rank below that of Adams, refuse to salute her and require her and her unit to move to the back of a movie theatre. Her resistance fuels the hostility of those who already think that women, and especially black women, have no role to play in the war effort, while also blazing a trail for future generations. Two of the women are still alive and are shown, now around the age of 100, at the picture’s end, and this is an unashamedly rousing, humanitarian drama with lavish production design and featuring a cameo from Oprah Winfrey.

Its message is clear and unequivocal – that unless we fight for the causes that we believe in, reactionary and injurious forces will prevail, and this is a remarkable film for the way that it shows how history can be told in a different way and can in the process bring together communities otherwise lacking a voice. Wherever there are bullies, the film is telling us, they must be taken down, and ‘The Six Triple Eight’ is a clarion call for showing how there are dividends that can be paid for putting oneself on the line and refusing to allow discrimination of any kind to persist.