Can you make an engaging film about predicting the weather? Pressure, directed by Anthony Maras, answers this question in the affirmative. Set mere days before D-Day is set to commence, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) needs an accurate forecast to ensure the operation will commence as planned. The film’s stark opening minutes portray the vicious aftermath of Operation Tiger, a D-Day training exercise gone horribly wrong only months earlier. Hundreds of American soldiers were killed by friendly fire after some deadly miscommunication. We find Eisenhower steadfast but shaken, surrounded by British generals who believe they can do a better job leading the Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF) to victory. Damian Lewis represents this feeling in his outsized portrayal of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of all D-Day land forces.
Andrew Scott plays meteorologist James Stagg, recommended by Churchill himself to help forecast. Eisenhower’s trusted American meteorologist Irving Krick (Chris Messina) is thus forced to play second fiddle to Stagg. When it’s time to tell the powers that be what the weather will do, the two men disagree and Eisenhower must choose whom to trust. That is the central conflict of Pressure. It’s earnestly fascinating that the film works as well as it does. It moves at a brisk pace and is populated by incredibly entertaining supporting turns, most especially Kerry Condon, who plays Eisenhower’s personal secretary Kay Summersby. Ultimately, Pressure is a deft examination of the minutiae of war: the in-fighting, the gossip, the assumptions, the regret. The weather! These things matter and matter mightily.
Scott plays Stagg like a lead from one of Powell and Pressburger’s World War II movies—I kept thinking of David Farrar from The Small Back Room. Stagg is confident, mercurial, and hard to like. Until, of course, he isn’t. Messina plays off Scott perfectly, his Krick the exact opposite (aside from the confidence). He’s jovial and charming, making the most of his war. Fraser’s Ike is full of bluster, but the Oscar winner’s soft, vulnerable face does well to betray his poise. At one point, Eisenhower admits: “When I close my eyes, everything I see is failure.” It’s a deeply strange performance that stands out from the rest of the ensemble, which I suppose is the intent.
Maras makes the most of limited sets. Nearly every scene takes place in some sort of meeting room, save for a quite effective, pivotal sequence in a nearby church. Production designer Daniel Taylor deserves a lot of credit for filling each frame with a busied, lived-in world of war-planning and worry. Cinematographer Jamie Ramsay also does solid work, building effective contrast inside dark, smoky rooms. One wishes he pushed it even further, adding a noir style to the interiors.
Pressure is an interesting, entertaining thriller that harkens back to a kind of studio picture that is now only made by mid-majors like Focus Features. It’s also a celebration of the people who do their jobs and do them well. Too often do we elect the Eisenhowers of the world president while forgetting those who made his job easier.
Pressure opens in theaters on Friday, May 29.