Literally every time I think of this movie and its title, I think of “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie, specifically that bassline right at the top, the one Vanilla Ice repurposed for “Ice Ice Baby” and then got into some legal trouble over. I hear it every single time. I don’t know why, but that is the pressure that has been put on me by the film Pressure: trying to remember the lyrics to a Queen and David Bowie song.
Pressure is a nice, pleasant surprise for the year, a World War II drama that somehow manages to tell a story that isn’t typically told. At this point, it feels like we have turned almost every possible World War II story into a movie, limited series or docuseries, yet somehow this one slipped through. Directed by Anthony Maras, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Haig based on Haig’s stage play, Pressure becomes something of a chamber piece featuring a relatively small ensemble of actors trying to determine which day would be best for D-Day. Obviously, looking back, no day was ever going to be great for D-Day considering the number of lives that would be lost, but the Allies were trying to predict when the weather would be the most tolerable within the window where they believed they had the best chance of success.
The film focuses on Scottish meteorologist Group Captain James Stagg, played by Andrew Scott, who is brought in to science the shit out of the situation and take command of all the possible data he can accumulate. Weather balloons, charts, observations, whatever was available to him at the time. Our ability to predict weather is far more advanced today. We have satellites and technology that Stagg could only have dreamed about, so the fact that he was able to identify even slightly manageable weather conditions for the invasion is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, he spends much of the film butting heads with Colonel Irving Krick, played by Chris Messina, who believes historical weather patterns can be used to predict what will happen next. Krick has been lucky enough with his predictions that his approach is being treated like science, but Stagg keeps pointing out that looking at what happened on a similar day years ago and assuming it will happen again is not the same thing as actually understanding what the weather is doing now.
That disagreement becomes increasingly important because ultimately they have to convince General Dwight D. Eisenhower, played by Brendan Fraser, whether or not to send thousands of soldiers toward Normandy. Stagg and Krick clash, they yell at each other, the stress continues to ratchet up, and everything is operating on a ticking clock. How high can the waves be before the boats become ineffective? How much fog can there be before visibility becomes a problem? How much wind can the paratroopers tolerate before their drops become too dangerous? Pressure understands that these questions can become incredibly suspenseful when thousands of lives are attached to the answers. We see a little bit of war and combat, but most of this movie remains contained within the facilities where Stagg, Krick and the Allied commanders are trying to argue their way toward a decision.
Kerry Condon plays Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s driver and personal secretary, who essentially becomes the Eisenhower whisperer. Historically, there has been plenty of speculation about the exact nature of their relationship, but the film doesn’t really lean into those rumors. Instead, whenever Eisenhower is angry or somebody needs something from him, Summersby seems to understand how to approach him in a measured manner likely to produce a calmer result. Damian Lewis is also here as Bernard “Monty” Montgomery, with Con O’Neill as Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, helping fill out the collection of military brass debating every possible condition surrounding the invasion.
Meanwhile, Stagg is going through his own personal crisis. When he is called in to make this prediction, he leaves his pregnant wife Liz, played by Tamsin Topolski, at home. While he is working, a bombing leaves him unable to determine whether she is safe, and he cannot simply leave to find her because the decision about D-Day still has to be made. That gives Scott the opportunity to reflect the pressure of the entire situation both personally and professionally, sometimes within the same scene. Andrew Scott is fantastic here, and he has been knocking performances out of the park. What I particularly like about Pressure is that, unlike some of his other films where he isn’t really the lead, this is unquestionably his movie. He gets these terrific scenes where Stagg is desperately trying to make powerful people understand what science actually is and why they need to listen to him instead of trying to read the tea leaves of the past.
Brendan Fraser lost me a little bit initially because he isn’t necessarily what you would expect from someone trying to pull off a Dwight D. Eisenhower performance. However, if you remove that expectation, Fraser’s acting is strong. The way he carries himself, the way he emotionally reacts to the enormity of these decisions and the pressure he projects all work. He just doesn’t seem particularly interested in doing an Eisenhower impersonation. There isn’t a significant alteration to his voice, speech pattern or tone that makes you forget you are listening to Brendan Fraser. On my second viewing, that bothered me considerably less, and I appreciated the performance more for what it was rather than what I initially expected it to be. Chris Messina gives exactly the kind of performance you would imagine Chris Messina giving in this movie as a pompous asshole absolutely convinced he is right, while Condon, who earned an Oscar nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin, delivers another strong supporting performance and stands out as the only female character of real substance in the film.
Maras keeps the direction tight, the pacing is excellent, and the editing keeps everything flowing despite this being an extremely dialogue-heavy film. Even the occasional choices to jump into the actual war are limited enough that they never overwhelm the central story. Those sequences almost provide a CliffsNotes version of D-Day for anyone who somehow hasn’t already seen something like Saving Private Ryan and doesn’t fully understand how brutal the invasion was. If you’re bringing a teenager who hasn’t really dipped their toes into World War II cinema yet, Pressure provides some sense of that reality without making the violence the central focus. This is ultimately a movie about conversations, arguments, predictions and decisions, and the screenplay gives these actors the kind of grand speeches that allow someone like Scott to really shine. Volker Bertelmann’s score also works nicely. I don’t know that I’m going to remember it at the end of the year when thinking about my favorite scores, but I certainly appreciated it while watching the film.
I’ve actually seen Pressure twice. I watched it once and hadn’t quite put together a review before watching it a second time with someone I knew would probably enjoy it, and they absolutely did. It is difficult to convince somebody that this is their kind of movie when you explain what it’s about. It’s a film about predicting the weather before D-Day. That’s honestly a tough sell. It doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but weirdly, it is. Even better, I actually enjoyed Pressure more the second time around. I was less bothered by Fraser’s lack of Eisenhower mimicry and more appreciative of what he was actually doing with the performance. The tension still worked even though I obviously knew exactly where everything was going, which says quite a bit about how effectively this film has been constructed.
The audio description is pretty solid as well. It rises to the occasion during the brief battle sequences, which do feature some violence, while spending most of its time tightly focused on these interiors and the central characters duking it out over the forecast. It follows details like cigarettes in people’s hands, when someone takes a drag, and other visual elements appropriate to the period. There’s even a piano sitting around that draws Stagg’s ire at one point. If I have one criticism, it’s that there is a larger supporting group of characters who don’t really have much to do. They hand people papers, move around desks and create the hustle and bustle of this command center, but they don’t contribute much individually to the story. I was never entirely sure how many people were in the room or what distinguished them from one another because both the film and the description remain so heavily focused on the leads. There are considerably more than four people in this cast. I’m just not sure the audio description always supports that impression.
I highly recommend Pressure. I think this is a film that got a little overlooked and may be something people discover later on Peacock or wherever it eventually travels in the streaming ecosystem. Especially as Andrew Scott’s star continues to rise and he generates Oscar buzz for El Señor, people may go looking for other recent Scott performances to chew on, and Pressure deserves to benefit from that curiosity. Surprising, engaging and way better than I thought it would be, Pressure delivers with the force of a hurricane bearing down on you as you wait for official word about whether this should be pushed toward the top of your watch list. It absolutely should.
Fresh: 8.2/10
