\u201cPressure,\u201d the new World War II movie from director Anthony Maras and writer David Haig, is a hyperfocused look at the days leading up to D-day with a special focus on the weather. It\u2019s a one-setting thriller that unspools in the pressure-cooker environment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s war room at an English country estate. The movie works backward from a famous 1961 Eisenhower quip to JFK that attributed his success in Normandy, France, to the Allies having \u201cbetter meteorologists than the Germans.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re skeptical about how exciting a movie about the weather on D-day might be, \u201cPressure\u201d takes that as a creative challenge, an argumentative stance from which to start. For the next hour and 40 minutes, Maras and co-writer Haig, who also wrote the 2014 play from which the film is adapted, explain to us exactly how important the meteorologists of D-day were, beginning with the disastrous D-day rehearsal Exercise Tiger.<\/p>\n
With the weather app at our fingertips these days, it can be hard to imagine just how difficult it was to forecast the weather in the 1940s, especially in Northern Europe. That was the predicament facing Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser<\/a>) just 72 hours before the planned D-day launch of June 5, 1944. But we know that D-day happened on June 6, so the arrival at that date is part of the film\u2019s narrative intrigue.<\/p>\n After a devastating glimpse of Exercise Tiger, red blood mixing with blue ocean waves and white sandy beaches, we\u2019re quickly introduced to our protagonist, Group Capt. Chief Meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott<\/a>), in his cozy home with his pregnant wife before he\u2019s swept into critical war planning.<\/p>\n He\u2019s stern, terse and no-nonsense. Stagg is the kind of person who wants to be correct more than he wants to be liked and he insists on a careful collection of live data, using weather balloons, phone calls and mathematical charting. His foil is Col. Irving Krick (Chris Messina), a charming American meteorologist and Eisenhower\u2019s chosen weather guru, a yes man who relies on selective historical data and a persuasive speaker whose approach rankles the fastidious Stagg. Eisenhower instructs the two men to come to an agreement and \u201cPressure\u201d follows the ups and downs of their working relationship over the course of several days.<\/p>\n The movie becomes a two-hander between Scott\u2019s Stagg and Fraser\u2019s Eisenhower, the former convinced that a storm on June 5 will make conditions less than ideal, the latter raging at the uncertainty while simultaneously attempting to placate a phalanx of military personnel. The troops are requisitioned, the destroyers in place, the full moon just right, the secrecy of the invasion delicate. Fraser\u2019s explosive performance underlines the immensity of the stakes, balancing every precarious element of this enormous mission.<\/p>\n Maras, who is known for another terrific one-setting thriller based on a true story, 2018\u2019s \u201cHotel Mumbai,\u201d<\/a> both directs and edits and his films are put together like precision clockwork: propulsive and relentless, the pace italicized by Volker Bertelmann\u2019s scores. \u201cPressure\u201d is skillfully directed, sweeping us into this world with a kind of addictive immediacy, and is also beautifully lensed by cinematographer Jamie Ramsay. Maras and Ramsay make the wise choice to shoot the film with richly saturated color instead of the usual grayish, desaturated look often assigned to period pieces set in this era. It\u2019s not gritty and harsh, but rather stunning and lovely \u2014 an eerie contrast to the terror and bloodshed of the day itself.<\/p>\n While Fraser delivers an external performance as the tough American general, Scott offers a restrained, mostly tamped-down depiction of the repressed and methodical Stagg. But when he finally bursts with a cathartic eleventh-hour speech about the inaccuracy of Krick\u2019s historical forecast, Eisenhower listens. Scott, as seen in \u201cAll of Us Strangers\u201d<\/a> and \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d<\/a> is so good at this kind of acting, processing every emotion internally but allowing just enough to show to let the audience into his character\u2019s emotional state. It\u2019s wildly compelling to watch.<\/p>\n