Pressure
Delving into one of the less explored aspects of one of the most covered war moments in history, the script by Anthony Maras and David Haig, based on Haig's stage play, explores how weather won perhaps the most crucial battle of World War II. Despite it's slightly unusual subject matter, the structure of the film (involving one lone voice of reason struggling to be heard over the naysayers) is quite familiar.
Our genius protagonist is James Stagg (Andrew Scott), a Scottish meteorologist officer assigned to the Allied Forces, brought it to rubber stamp the proposed Allied invasion of Normandy on June 5 and confirm Operation Overlord can go ahead as scheduled. While an expert in his field, Stagg isn't exactly the warmest of fellows, which doesn't endear him to the rest of the group as he quickly butts heads with General Dwight D. Eisenhower's (Brendan Fraser) own weather expert (Chris Messina).
Mostly a film about arguments in closed rooms thousands of miles from the battlefield (you can definitely feel the stage play structure), and scientists hunched over maps and reams of data, Pressure keeps its tension by focusing on everything hinging on the success of D-Day and the necessity of Allied Forces getting a foothold in Europe if they would have any chance to mount a counter-attack against the Nazis.
The film is structured in a battle of wills between Stagg, who believes the D-Day invasion on June 5 would be disastrous given current weather patterns, and Eisenhower's handpicked expert who forecasts nothing but sunny skies based on historical examples. Although we see many of the men under Stagg working diligently to get him as much data as possible, and even eventually buy into Stagg's forecasting, in terms of name players the script is structured as Stagg (who, as our protagonist, is obviously right) versus the rest of the world.
Pressure is really Scott's film with Messina's "expert" never really treated as such. Even if you don't know the history, the alternate take (nor the man championing it) is never taken seriously by our main character who Stagg refers to as a moron more than once. Fraser's Ike comes off a bit scatterbrained waffling between indecision and bouts of anger not understanding why it would be so hard to come up with a simple weather report days before the invasion. There are a few familiar faces thrown in as well, most notably Kerry Condon as Eisenhower's assistant, who grows to respect Stagg despite getting off on the wrong foot with him, and Damian Lewis as one of the military men who seems completely oblivious as to how weather might impact warfare.
Laid out in somewhat the inverse of Saving Private Ryan, ending with the big war scene rather than opening with it, Pressure is a solid historical drama helped immensely by the meteorological aspects of the war being far less scrutinized than other areas of the World War II, and the invasion of Normandy specifically. It may not be great, but it's still pretty good, and I'll give it points for championing science and those (after arguably far more than enough convincing) willing to follow it even when it may have flown in the face of common sense which, as even Eisenhower himself stated, won the Allies the war.
- Title: Pressure
- IMDb: link
