Brendan Fraser stars in a slice of D-Day’s history in Pressure, a film about the meteorologists that shaped WWII’s outcome.
Death, taxes, and war movies about the untold perspectives of events that shaped the world. These are life’s inevitabilities, and Pressure, a movie about the D-Day meteorologists, is the latest of the latter.
On paper, debates about D-Day’s weather does not sound like enough material to sustain a two-hour runtime. Thankfully, writer David Haig found more than enough material to write a play about it in 2014. Now that play is this film, directed and co-written by Anthony Maras to riveting effect.
Pressure opens just after Exercise Tiger, a failed D-Day rehearsal that resulted in the deaths of over 700 American servicemen. With the catastrophe weighing heavily on his mind, Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) needs D-Day to succeed. If it fails or is delayed, the Allies risk losing the war. And when you’re about to send troops into notoriously rainy France, what do you do? You call in the meteorologists.
A confident American and a sullen Scotsman walk into a war room…
Photo Credit: Alex Bailey/ Focus Features/StudioCanal
There’s already an American meteorologist, Irving Krick (Chris Messina), at Eisenhower’s base in England, but a more local expert arrives to round out the forecast. Enter James Stagg (Andrew Scott), a no-nonsense Scotsman whose methodology and matter-of-factness quickly clashes with Krick’s all-American confidence.
With only three days until the planned D-Day operation, Stagg and Krick have conflicting forecasts. Krick predicts a sunny day in France, while Stagg’s concerned about storms approaching Normandy. Every debate over storms and sunshine is clouded with the urgency of how many lives are at stake if a prediction is wrong. One incorrect forecast could ruin the Allies’ chances of winning World War II.
Pressure is a war film that takes place almost entirely inside offices and war rooms. Eisenhower, his Irish secretary (Kerry Condon), and their team use an English manor to house their base, but the most they ever leave is to attend the chapel across the grounds. The pressure is on as Klick and Stagg consult maps and historical records while Eisenhower demands they agree on a forecast. War wages on the battlefield, but there’s a war of personalities going on, too.
Andrew Scott is an excellent leading man.
Photo Credit: Alex Bailey/ Focus Features/StudioCanal
Scott, as Stagg, is more than up to task of leading this small but stacked cast. Scott’s performance is so strikingly stoic and serious it’s a wonder that he’s best known to audiences as a gleefully psychotic Moriarty and Fleabag‘s foul-mouthed Hot Priest. Stagg is a brilliant, focused meteorologist in a room that’s happy to veer into distracted chats about Krick meeting the cast of Gone with the Wind. Stagg has a job to do. When Andrew Scott speaks, you lean in to listen.
The rest of the cast suffices, but doesn’t reach Scott’s heights. Fraser’s Eisenhower shines in the quiet moments, especially as he worries to Summersby about the fate that awaits the Allies. When Eisenhower yells at Stagg and Krick, it’s more cartoonish than powerful. It takes the air out of some of Pressure‘s most tense moments. Messina’s a great foil to Scott, but isn’t utilized as often as he needs to be. Condon is given less to do, but commands the screen in her limited screen time.
The bottom line.
Pressure won’t reinvent the war movie or create a fresh take on it, like 1917‘s one-shot action or Dunkirk unfolding over one hour, one day, and one week. But there’s something charmingly old-fashioned about how Pressure plays out. We, the audience, know how the story ends, but the characters don’t. The stakes are palpable, and Volker Bertelmann‘s excellent score highlights the urgency these figures are working under.
Pressure has marketed itself as “The Untold True Story of D-Day,” and it’s an accurate statement. Is the weather the first thing one thinks of when it comes to D-Day? Probably not. It won’t be the first D-Day movie to come to mind in the future, either. That honor still goes to Saving Private Ryan‘s harrowing D-Day sequence, or even 1962’s epic The Longest Day. But when you watch those in the future, you’ll know what led to those moments. And it started with clashing weather forecasts: one sunny, one stormy.
Pressure is now playing in theaters everywhere. Watch the trailer below.
Images courtesy of Alex Bailey, Focus Features, and StudioCanal. Read more articles by Claire Di Maio here.
REVIEW RATING
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Pressure - 7/10
7/10
Claire was once asked in elementary school why her go-to question was always, “Watch anything good lately?” It’s still her go-to question, because she loves hearing what other people are passionate about. She often sacrifices sleep in the hopes that she will one day clear her to-watch and to-read lists (a futile effort so far).
