Kerry Washington – A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

In August of 2025, Spike Lee released “Highest 2 Lowest”, his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington. The movie is about a wealthy music executive, played by Denzel Washington, who has his son kidnapped, only to find out later that the kidnappers took the son of his best friend by mistake. The moral question follows: will Danzel’s character still give the kidnappers millions of dollars even though the son they kidnapped is not his child?

Surprisingly, the new Ben Affleck Netflix film, “Animals”, has just about the exact same premise as Highest 2 Lowest. So similar that Ben Affleck delayed the production of his film to avoid the obvious comparisons between the two. It is hard to understand why Affleck, one of the three screenwriters, did not make a major rewrite to avoid what could become a copyright infringement lawsuit, given how alarmingly similar these movies are.

The two main characters, Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck) and David King (Denzel Washington), are both wealthy and having money problems due to debt at the time of the kidnapping. Mark Kimball is running for mayor of Los Angeles, and David King is a well-known music mogul. One main difference is that Kimball hires an expensive kidnapping expert, Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), who charges 20% of the ransom to try to solve the kidnapping, with options that include even killing the kidnappers. Kerry Washington plays Kimball’s wife, Abigail Kimball, and has acting scenes with Affleck that were highly emotional and well performed throughout. There are other well-played scenes with Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson, with large contrasts between a distraught Affleck and an always very calm Anderson.

The ending was well done with original ideas, and a final conclusion that many will question based on several lies that were told to the police to avoid political damage to Kimball’s mayoral campaign.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 36% is too low, as this is not a bad movie, aside from the possible plagiarism issues. I rank this movie as a passable 70%, mainly due to the acting of Affleck, Anderson, and Washington.

The new Netflix movie “The Six Triple Eight”, written and directed by Tyler Perry is a World War II story about 855 black women in a troop commissioned to sort and deliver 17 million pieces of delayed mail, including letters, and packages that were addressed to U.S. troops in Europe. A task vital to the morale of the troops fighting in the war.

This movie reminded me in so many ways of the great 2016 movie “Hidden Figures” about genius black women who faced bigotry and disrespect from the men and women at NASA, but despite this, saved the space program and the lives of several astronauts along the way. Movies like this are necessary to finally show respect to great human beings who were never recognized like they should have been. The expression goes, “Better late than never”, but like Hidden Figures, this movie will make many people angry that it took so long for the world to know about this amazing group of 855 women during World War II.

The Six Triple Eight (6888) is the name of the army troop of black women who were given an impossible task under disaster conditions while facing nothing but resistance from the entire higher ranks of the U.S. Army, who through their bigotry, actually wanted these women to fail. Within a large series of huge airplane hangers, the Army stored millions of letters and packages that were never sent. The women were housed in a heavily damaged building, with no heat for months, and despite impossible odds and lies from several members of the U.S. Army claiming they were not doing their job, they managed to complete the task in 90 days, even though they were given 6 months.

This film stars Kerry Washington as Major Charity Adams, in one of her best acting roles. Washington is outstanding, especially in the scenes where she stands up to the outrageous disrespect she receives from her superior officers, with the main standout being General Halt, played by Dean Norris, who is most known for this portrayal of Hank Schrader the lead police officer in the “Breaking Bad” TV series.

I was also impressed with some of the early action scenes showing some battles of World War II, considering this is a lower-budget Netflix production.

A key quote from Major Adams in this film summarizes what these 855 women faced very well, “Because you are Negroes and women,” she tells them, “you do not have the luxury to be as good as the White soldiers. You have the burden to be better.” Another great quote is: “They did not send us because they thought we could do it, we are here because they are sure we cannot.” Considering the importance of this impossible task during World War II it is amazing to realize that the U.S. Army would employ so many black women to deliver so much mail while hoping they would fail.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this very good and significant World War II movie, is an absurdly low 50%, with a correct audience ranking of 82%. This time around, I agree with the audience ranking and consider this a must-see Netflix film.