In Tyler Perry’s melodramatic war film “The Six Triple Eight,” the quiet part is always extremely loud and incredibly close. Based on a true story, Perry’s second historical piece after “A Jazzman’s Blues” remembers the women of the all-black 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, who faced ruthless racism during their service in World War II. While the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) have previously received some film roles, most notably Edward Buzzell’s Keep Your Powder Dry, black female soldiers in the Army have been all but wiped out. There’s a remarkable opportunity to tell her story here, which makes the shortcomings of Perry’s take hard to stomach.

“The Six Triple Eight” has its heart in the right place; It’s just not a particularly good film.

Perry’s writings are too fractal to be coherent. He opens his film in December 1943 in San Pietro, Italy, with a major set piece. A white soldier weaves through trenches and then charges the rugged landscape with his battalion, only to narrowly miss the fiery impact of a downed fighter on the ground. The soldier pulls the pilot out of the rubble and takes a bloody letter from him that will lie undelivered in an army warehouse for years. From the battlefield, Perry jumps back to 1942 in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, where Lena Derriecott King (Ebony Obsidian) says goodbye to her white Jewish boyfriend Abram David (Gregg Sulkin). His sudden death during the war propels us to 1944 at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where a newly recruited King falls under the command of Major Charity Adams (Kerry Washington). These events all occur in the film’s clunky opening act, triggering a kind of narrative whiplash.

A similar imbalance arises from Perry’s inability to elegantly blend the stories of King and Adams. King is at the center of the film’s intended emotions. Her grief for David is so great that she finds it difficult to return the attention of handsome soldier Hugh Bell (Jay Reeves) – the soon-to-be-married soldier is admittedly a mess. She also sees David’s ghost everywhere. The petite king is initially unfit for military service, and her inability to bear the physical and psychological burden brings her to the ire of the demanding Adam. It is a tenacious Adams who symbolizes the battalion’s activist spirit. She bears the brunt of the racial slurs from her white superiors, like the vile General Halt (Dean Norris), who distrusts that black women are capable of anything. The combination of these strong-willed women should make a powerful mix. And yet Perry is too busy conjuring up over-the-top speeches to make either woman feel human. Instead, they have the subtlety of an “Uncle Sam” poster.

Dialogue is often a theme for Perry, although not always a blatant one. The fact that he bluntly expresses his characters’ innermost feelings is one of the reasons why he is so popular. The people in his films always say the quiet part out loud, which has a hilarious and sometimes deeply emotional effect. Unfortunately, this style doesn’t come into its own so well in “The Six Triple Eight”. Adams should be loud, confident and unwavering as she shouts orders and addresses these soldiers. But Perry gives Adams so few subtle moments, moments in which we can see her personality, that most of Washington’s committed performance is largely realized. The same goes for the romantic conversations between King and David, which are less affectionate and more extremely wooden and stilted. It’s as if Perry was describing the two as Victorian-era clichés rather than teenagers in the 1940s.

The film’s garish VFX work is equally shoddy. The opening fight sequence, for example, is rendered so flatly that you can practically see the strings pulling the actors away from the cotton candy-textured smoke and fake fire that has as much body as cheap aluminum foil. The immaculately maintained sets look more like stage sets than lived-in spaces. Affections also inform every part of this film; Syrupy accents and cakey makeup abound.

When the film moves abroad, Perry is less in control of the rhythm. Prompted by a visit from a grieving mother (Kerry O’Malley) looking for letters from loved ones, Eleanor Roosevelt (an engaging Susan Sarandon) explains to FDR (Sam Waterston) that action is needed to address undelivered mail distribute so that the morale among the soldiers does not fall, the American people. At the suggestion of Mary McLeod Bethune (Oprah Winfrey), the 6888th are sent to France to deal with the backlog. There they are constantly confronted with dehumanizing racism: a conniving priest, a disrespectful General Halt and an apathetic bureaucracy that doesn’t even want to bury their fallen friends. The biggest speeches take place in these scenes, often in such rapid succession that it’s hard to tell where the applause should begin or end.

This film is at its strongest when Perry focuses on the sisterhood these women feel for each other. Most of King’s friends are pretty one-note, with the exception of the outspoken Johnnie Mae (Shanice Shantay), who plays like the stereotypical comedic, buxom black woman that is a constant in Perry’s works. Still, it’s these quiet moments when the women go dancing or emotionally care for each other, especially in the face of misogyny, where the film most resonates with Keep Your Powder Dry. This togetherness drives “The Six Triple Eight” to its tearful conclusion.

What’s particularly frustrating about Perry’s take on this battalion’s history is the inherent poignancy of the story. Despite his failed creative choices, one can’t help but be touched by the unwavering spirit of these black women. And of course, Perry does a great service in bringing viewers closer to her story. One only wishes he had shown the ultimate level of commitment by empowering a black woman to tell this implicitly powerful story instead.

Now on Netflix.