Putting ‘Pressure’ on the Weathermen of World War II

If the phrase “…and Brendan Fraser as General Dwight D. Einsenhower” doesn’t deter you from this po-faced drama about an unexpected storm system slightly delaying preparations for the seminal 1944 invasion otherwise known as D-Day, then Pressure might just be the movie for you. Like the Oscar-winning actor, the film is an earnest and heartfelt but ultimately lightweight experience, an oddly myopic look at arguably the most consequential campaign in World War Two history. A weatherman beat the Nazis! Um, sure…?

Pressure ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Anthony Maras
Written by: David Haig, Anthony Maras
Starring: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis
Running time: 100 mins

Andrew Scott stars as the grim Group Captain James Stagg, a Scot generally considered the best meteorologist in the United Kingdom and the man Churchill called a genius. No one likes him because he’s a dour wet blanket who keeps incessantly asking for data: upper air data, surface data, sea data. “If we’ve measured it, I want it,” he barks at his men. His revelatory insight: the weather in Northern Europe is unpredictable!

No one else seems to share this paradigm-shifting hot take, least of all cocky U.S. Colonel Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina), who has a perfect record predicting rainfall in places like North Africa — mainly because it’s North Africa, a region well-known for its stable weather conditions and distinct paucity of thunderstorms. Krick formulates his projections by analyzing old weather patterns, and pours over historical analogue charts for clues to predict the future. If a 19-year-old chart with similar climate conditions shows clear weather, then, in Krick’s estimation, history will clearly and most definitely repeat itself. Stagg’s sourpuss dissent: weather changes.

General Eisenhower (Fraser, chunky and balding) craves certainty, and demands that his weatherman give him a confident forecast for what will happen in 72 hours — specifically 6:30am on Monday, June 5. That’s the planned time and date for D-Day, when 300,000 young men will execute the largest seaborne invasion in history, attempt to liberate France and destroy the German war machine.

“Monday will be calm and sunny!” says Krick with cocksure insistence. But Stagg disagrees, since there are two aggressive storms forming between Newfoundland and Normandy, with a jet stream propelling them both towards the Normandy Coast. He sees only strong winds, low clouds, poor visibility, rain, and 8- to 10-foot waves. “Disastrous conditions,” he retorts.

Who to trust? Poor Ike can’t decide. “Go or don’t go?” He yells. “Which is it?!?”

Anyone who has ever been gripped with paralysis over the question of bringing an umbrella outside on an overcast day might find Pressure to be one of the most sublimely nerve-wracking portrayals of combat indecision ever rendered on film. But most might see this painfully serious, tragically slight movie for what it is: a subplot that got accidentally supersized into a plot. Hollywood’s classic D-Day film, 1962’s three-hour epic The Longest Day, addresses the weather conundrum, too, but recognized far more nail-biting episodes happening simultaneously that deserved a bit more attention.

Buttressing the 2026 cast is the ever-reliable Kerry Condon as the dossier-clutching Kay Summersby, Aide to Supreme Commander and Ike’s no-nonsense Girl Friday. She’s the go-between who pals around with Krick, sympathizes with Stagg, and levels with Ike while keeping him organized. Her neutral-observer demeanor and sober assessments, delivered with a very human authority, grounds Pressure in a much more persuasive world of well-meaning officers making high-stakes decisions.

Damian Lewis also pops up as the snooty Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, a warmongering blowhard chomping at the bit for D-Day to begin who has no patience for Stagg or his Poindexter pontifications about biometric readings and wind speeds.

Director Anthony Maras opens up the adapted screenplay (based on a play by David Haig), bringing scope and scale to what otherwise is a chamber piece of jaw-clenched conversations in tense war rooms. Pressure handsomely and viscerally recreates those tense days leading up to D-Day, and includes climactic footage of the landing on Normandy Beach that mixes colorized archival footage with teeth-rattling re-enactments.

But a handful of kinetic combat moments can’t save the overheated Pressure from its limited point of view, an almost comically granular focus on climate — and a reverence for those who predict it — that makes the film seem less like a strum und drang war movie and more like a recruitment tool for the Royal Meteorological Society.