The British obsession with the weather goes from an easily mocked national quirk to a world-beating point of pride in “Pressure,” a handsome, efficient WWII drama that doesn’t go quite so far as to say a weatherman won the war, but wouldn’t mind one bit if that’s what you came away believing. The “weatherman,” in fact, is Captain James Stagg, the leading Scottish meteorologist who was appointed the Chief Meteorological Officer for Operation Overlord, reporting to General Dwight D. Eisenhower in determining just what day to make D-Day. If that sounds like less than riveting drama, you underestimate both the eternally unpredictable vagaries of the English summer, and the formidable magnetism of one Andrew Scott as Stagg, staunchly arguing with Brendan Fraser‘s Eisenhower about the rain as if thousands of lives depend on it — because, this time, they do.
Though the marketing for “Pressure” — opening wide Stateside this Friday, somewhat surprisingly months ahead of its U.K. bow — is emphasizing the epic scale of its pretty curtailed D-Day dramatization, Anthony Maras‘ film is mostly a chamber piece, set predominantly in the Allied military headquarters where the operation was planned down to the wire, its drama largely contained in tense verbal conflicts over desks and maps and bulletin boards. If, while watching it, you think it would work well on stage, that’s because it already has: Actor-playwright David Haig’s play of the same title was a West End success in 2014, but was perhaps too clipped, too British or too niche to transfer to Broadway.
It works well on screen too, however, in part because Australian helmer Maras (“Hotel Mumbai”) and Haig — who co-write the adaptation — don’t strain too hard to open it up. Instead, they honor the ironic scope and stakes of the original piece, in which the fate of the free world rests on environmental minutiae that no human can control, and chart the varying ways in which different parties respond to that powerlessness. (Much like the men on screen, they also keep a strict eye on the clock: Here’s a rare period war drama that comes in at a businesslike 100 minutes.)
When Stagg’s calculations lead him to conclude that an almighty storm is set to break on June 5, 1944 — the day originally earmarked for the Normandy landings — after a long period of balmy calm, potentially scuppering the entire vast project, his simple but urgent advice is to wait a day. Raring to go, all the top military brass, including the agitated Eisenhower and his supercilious British counterpart General Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis), act as though the rational, needfully single-minded man of science has personally betrayed the mission.
There’s a dry strain of comedy in watching these mighty men of war not just thwarted by a simple weather report, but reduced to sputtering anger by it: Though everything in “Pressure” from the serious-minded ensemble work to Jamie D. Ramsay’s discreetly varnished lensing to another urgently thrumming score by Volker Bertelmann (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) looks to ennoble the events playing out on screen, the film is lifted by its contrasting streak of absurdity.
It doesn’t help matters that Stagg’s American colleague, the less qualified meteorologist Irving Crick (a perfectly slick, slippery Chris Messina) is willing to selectively manipulate the charts to tell his superiors exactly what they want to hear, facts and stats be damned. Though set more than 80 years ago, “Pressure” quite sharply chimes in with the post-truth political climate of the Trump era, where expertise is distrusted by default, and leadership means unquestioned authority.
Not that Eisenhower, to be fair, is presented here as quite such a tyrant. Fraser’s entertainingly broad, blustery performance still permits some glimpses of humility and uncertainty in the future President, as even his brick-built shoulders buckle under the, well, pressure of the moment. A warmly level-headed presence in the somewhat thankless role of his personal secretary Kay Summersby, Kerry Condon is tasked with an awful lot of machismo-countering and ego-wrangling.
Still, the film belongs to the ever-reliable Scott, who commendably doesn’t take the easily sympathetic route with the anxious, uptight Stagg, playing him with a suitably dour chill to match his grim forecast — but also a stern, stoic integrity that you’d trust with your life. There’s no joy in raining on this particular parade: Scott, and in turn “Pressure,” make an unfashionable but timely stand for planning, listening and taking the sensible option.
