A One Mann’s Movies review of “Pressure”. (2026, 4.5*, 12A).
My review title for “Pressure” comes from a little tongue-twister that my old grandmother, Olive, always used to sing (but often omitting the “cold” and “hot” bits):
“Whether the weather be fine,
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We’ll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not!“
It was a little ditty that kept running through my head while watching this excellent new film from Anthony Maras based on a stage play by David Haig. For this is a “True Story” (no “based on” or “inspired by” prefix here) of the work of meteorologist Group Captain James Stagg in the 72 hours leading up to D-Day.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
It is 72 hours before the planned date for D-Day – the day on which allied forces attempt to retake Europe from the Nazis by landing on the Normandy beaches. Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott) leaves his heavily pregnant wife Liz (Tamsin Topolski) to be locked away, incommunicado, in Southwick House in Hampshire. This is the country estate where General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) is planning the invasion. Stagg is tasked with predicting the weather for D-Day – June 5th, 1944 – but immediately clashes with US meteorologist Irving Krick (Chris Messina) who has a diametrically opposed view to Stagg.
Certification:
UK: 12A; US: PG-13. (At the time of writing, the BBFC certificate had not been made public on their website.)
Talent:
Starring: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis, Tamsin Topolski, Jojo Macari, Con O’Neill, Alexander Hanson, Robert Portal.
Directed by: Anthony Maras.
Written by: David Haig & Anthony Maras. (Based on the stage play by David Haig.)
Running Time: 1h 40m.
Review:
Positives:
- I have to start with the acting.
- Andrew Scott seems to be getting all of the acting plaudits on the festival circuit for his new film Elsinore. But blow me (meteorological pun intended), he is simple magnificent in this film. He comes striding into Southwick House, tightly buttoned, somewhat arrogant and not budging an inch on his beliefs and principles. And you 100% believe in this character. In some of his scenes, particularly when he is presenting in the war room and for a particularly emotional phone call, the hair stood up on my neck because he is so powerful. A magnificent job.
- Also equally strong is Brendan Fraser – continuing his acting resurgence – playing General Eisenhower. You really struggle to think how Eisenhower could ever cope with the pressure of being the Supreme Commander in charge of such a massive undertaking. Fraser really nicely depicts that level of bottled up stress, remaining calm and collected for the most part but then with that stress releasing in bursts of anger and frustration. “I don’t want your best…” he says to Stagg “…I want certainty”. A scene where he (to use an Alex Ferguson reference) ‘hair-dryers’ Stagg is simple brilliant acting between the pair, with Scott’s Stagg, for the first time, losing his icy composure and cracking as Eisenhower bellows in his ear!
- I was also full of admiration for Damian Lewis playing General Montgomery, who as depicted here really could be the most insufferable bully. “My men are ready for the big match. Get them on the beaches, somehow, anyhow. Leave the rest to me” he rants, ignoring all the predictions presented to him by Stagg and the protestations of his naval and air-force peers. When challenged on his views, he snarkily replies “I’ve actually been to war”. It’s another really solid and believable performance at the heart of the film.
- The history really is fascinating. We start the film with a little known tragedy called Operation Tiger which unfolded on Slapton Sands in Devon. This was meant to be a training mission for D-Day, but tragically a total of 749 US army and navy personnel died there due to a series of unfortunate events. In the film, the whole tragedy is put on Eisenhower’s shoulders, due to cock-ups with communications that led to friendly fire shelling of US troops on the beach. In reality, many of the deaths came from a series of U-boat attacks on landing craft in Lyme Bay and the fact that the men had not been given training on how to wear life-vests: tragically turning them turtle and drowning them due to their heavy back-packs. All in all, a complete cock-up. Seeing this film with the Illustrious Mrs Movie Mann – a historian – is always fascinating as she built up a lot of questions to Google afterwards: “it’s very US focused: was Eisenhower really in charge?”; “were church bells allowed to be sounded in WW2”; etc.
- I enjoyed the insistently stressy score by Volker Bertelmann: his second wartime score in as many weeks (after De Gaulle: Résistence). (But to counter that, the Illustrious Mrs Movie Mann found the score a bit intrusive in the early parts of the film.)
- The set design of Southwick house is superb, as are all of the cars and props that we see on the streets and at Stagg’s home. The house standing in for Southwick is Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire and if you are thinking that it looks a bit familiar, that might be because it was also the location for Wayne Manor in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. Sadly, Mentmore is privately owned, but you can very occasionally, visit the actual Southwick House and get a tour of Eisenhower’s preserved war room.
- I didn’t think in this film we would actually ‘go there’, to the beach landings in Normandy, but we do. It’s not as visceral as that incredible opening to Saving Private Ryan, but it is all very well done and again makes you shudder to imagine being in the boots of those brave and terrified men in landing craft approaching the beaches and a hail of machine gun fire.
Negatives:
- I was less convinced by Kerry Condon’s character (but not in terms of Condon’s acting). She plays Kay Summersby, aide to Eisenhower, who takes a liking to Stagg and tries to smooth his path. We see her pushing Ike strongly for something. I’m afraid, to me, this rather felt like “we’d better put a female character in here in a key role because otherwise the film’s too male centric”. Reading up on this more now, it seems where was a strong relationship between Summersby and Eisenhower, with Harry S. Truman alleging that Eisenhower sought permission to divorce his wife, Mamie, to marry Summersby. So perhaps I’m being unfair and she would have spoken-up to him in the way she did. But in the isolated context of this film, it didn’t seem very realistic.
- There is rather a clunky coda to the film, involving a level of suspense that seemed false and unwarranted. As a viewer, you are made to think one thing which is then shown to not be the case. I didn’t think it was really needed.
Summary Thoughts:
This is a terrific little film. At just 100 minutes, taut, compact and full of suspense. We’ve seen snippets of this war-room planning in earlier films, for example in The Longest Day, but never in this level of detail and never from the very interesting angle of making weather forecasting sexy! It’s very much recommended, especially for old gits like me who (through our parents) still have a direct connection to the war.
I was mightily annoyed though that this got a release in the US for D-Day whereas we have had to wait until now for it. Why? Irritating!
I saw this as an Everyman members preview: the film opens in UK cinemas from next Friday, September 11th.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gQwG9Xi13g. Note that as this is quite a compact film, the trailer does include a number of key moments of dialogue, so I would suggest it is best avoided until after you’ve watched the film.
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