Pressure (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
1 hour ago
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PRESSURE (2026)

Starring Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis, Henry Ashton, Con O'Neill, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Toby Williams, Max Croes, Roseanna Brown, Tamsin Topolski, Jojo Macari, Alexander Hanson, Robert Portal, Joshua Hill, Richard Clothier, Michael Benz, Crispin Letts, Harrison Osterfield, Sebastian Orozco and Pedro Leandro.

Screenplay by David Haig & Anthony Maras.

Directed by Anthony Maras.

Distributed by Focus Features. 100 minutes. Rated PG-13.

"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you." – Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The D-Day invasion of Normandy changed the complexion of World War II and changed history irrevocably. As described by online by the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute, “A storm of steel and determination arose over the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944. What unfolded that day would become one of the most ambitious and consequential military operations in history. Known as D-Day, or Operation Overlord, it marked the beginning of the Allied effort to liberate Western Europe from Nazi control. This immense assault required years of planning, involved troops from over a dozen nations, and came at a terrible cost. Yet its success helped seal the fate of Adolf Hitler’s regime.”

It is such an important moment in history that there have been dozens of movies, documentaries and TV shows about the D-Day invasion, including such classics as The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, The Big Red One, 36 Hours, D-Day: The Sixth of June and many others. Therefore, if you are going to make another movie about this particular battle, you need to bring something unique to the story.

Pressure actually does achieve that. It looks at D-Day from a perspective which has never been tackled on film. Yet eventually it turns out to be a war movie about the weather, which is a bit of a letdown.

Specifically, Pressure tells the story of some brilliant meteorologists who are brought in by General Dwight Eisenhower (played here by Brendan Fraser) to predict what the weather will be like for the planned D-Day attacks. Now, I’m not going to lie, I would have never particularly thought that this would be an important part of warfare planning, and yet, I guess that it really could play a significant role in planned invasions. Will the air be clear or will fog hinder the visibility? How choppy will the waves be for the boats as they land on the shores? Will there be torrential rain soaking the soldiers – or the messing up the armature?

So, yeah, I guess these people really did play a role in the D-Day invasions. Still, is this really a part of the story that needs to be aired out?

After all, much of the movie – which takes place in a vital and historic moment in world history – is showing people arguing over historic weather charts and setting off test balloons and basically luxuriating in the minutiae of meteorology. While this could be interesting – particularly if you work for AccuWeather – for the rest of us non-professionals it is a little overly specific and sometimes gets outright confusing or boring.

It kind of saps this truly momentous battle of its historic fascination. I mean, why not make a movie about the mess chefs serving on the boats and the drivers transporting the officers around the battle-torn areas? They all played a role in winning World War II as well.

But apparently years later, according to the informational chyron at the end of the film, in 1961 former-President Eisenhower was asked by the new President (and his successor) John F. Kennedy why D-Day was such a success. Eisenhower replied, "Because we had better meteorologists than the Germans."

Apparently from that simple statement a movie idea was born, although it took Hollywood 65 years to truly see the dramatic possibilities of military weathermen at war.

Of course it doesn’t necessarily help that Captain James Stagg (played by Andrew Scott who was so good playing songwriter Richard Rodgers a few months ago in another historical drama, Blue Moon), was the head meteorologist of the group of scientists brought in to guarantee that D-Day would happen on a relatively clear day. If we are to take Pressure at its word, and I guess I have no reason not to, Stagg was an uptight, antisocial, fun-hating jerk to his co-workers much of the time. This may be fine for a scientist in active war planning, but it’s a bit of a hindrance for the main character in a film.

He’s not the only character who doesn’t quite work here. Fraser, who has been on a hot streak as far as roles in recent years, never quite seems to capture Dwight Eisenhower’s essence, although he does rock Ike’s balding hairdo with panache. Chris Messina’s rival meteorologist Irving Krick feels a bit too modern, and Damian Lewis’ British officer Bernard Montgomery comes off as a bit cartoonish.

Kerry Condon – playing Eisenhower’s Irish personal secretary Kay Summersby – is the only character who mostly comes off well here. Even her story is whitewashed a bit here, according to one of my fellow critics at the screening Summersby later acknowledged that she and Eisenhower may have had an affair, a dynamic which Pressure does not show at all.

By the time that the actual fighting starts – about 15 minutes before the end of the film – it is a welcome bit of action in a film that tends to look at war a bit too cerebrally. Even the climactic war scenes are sort of one-upped by being followed by a personal moment in Stagg’s life, which is vitally important to him, but seems a bit anticlimactic to the rest of the world after the Allied troops have captured the beaches and secured the path to world freedom.

Perhaps it sounds like I am coming down too hard on Pressure, and perhaps I am. It was a well-made film that was fairly interesting at parts and opened my eyes to aspects of warfare I had never considered before. I’m not unhappy that I saw it. However, I can’t imagine ever being moved to watch it again.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdM4tdLQBg0