Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Cass Marks and Lucas Webb   Director: Anthony Maras     Screenplay: David Haig and Anthony Maras   Cast: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis, Con O’Neill, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Robert Portal, Tamsin Topolski, Alexander Hanson, Henry Ashton, Toby Williams, Max Croes and Roseanna Brown   Distributor: Focus Features

Grade: C

When you come right down to it, “Pressure” is a tale of a revolution in modern weather forecasting.  Of course, it’s set in the context of a rather significant historical event—the planning of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy that represented the beginning of the liberation of Nazi-occupied Western Europe by Allied forces.  How that turned out will be known to most, except perhaps many students in American high schools (perhaps even colleges), so one of the problems faced by writer-director Anthony Maras (working with David Haig, from whose 2014 play the film has been adapted) is generating suspense over something with a preordained outcome.  His measured, often lethargic approach doesn’t help the cause. 

On the other hand, he has the benefit of Andrew Scott, who plays the central character here—Group Captain James Stagg of the Scottish Met Office.  Stagg was assigned as the Chief Meteorological Officer on the staff of Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force that would mount the invasion, who had the ultimate responsibility for determining the timing of Operation Overlord, as the invasion was called.  Forecasting the weather was an integral part of the decision-making process.

Stagg was a proponent of forecasting based on up-to-the-minute data, such as reports from observers and readings provided by weather balloons (e.g., changes in barometric pressure).  Here he’s depicted as the rival, and opponent, of his American counterpart Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina), head of the U.S. contingent in the office, who followed a traditional method of forecasting based on past patterns and cycles. 

Krick opined that the weather on June 5, 1944, the morning Eisenhower had tentatively chosen for the operation, would be fair and suitable.  Stagg disagreed, eventually predicting storms, and as portrayed here the arguments on both sides grew heated, leading Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) to grow increasingly uncertain, haunted as he was by the memory of how Exercise Tigar, a rehearsal for D-Day (a flashback to which opens “Pressure”), had ended tragically the previous April.  Eventually Stagg predicted a gap between two oncoming storms that could allow the operation to proceed under reasonably favorable circumstances on June 6, the option Eisenhower chose to take, and Stagg was proven correct. 

Though the basic thrust of the account Haig and Maras present is historically accurate, there are some caveats.  One of them is the complete absence of Sverre Petterssen, a Norwegian meteorologist on a third team in the office, whose forecasts coincided with, and even predated, Stagg’s.  The omission can be justified in terms of dramatic license, since the writers are devoted to one-on-one struggles, presenting Stagg and Krick not only as diametrical opposites in terms of their viewpoints, but as rivals for dominance within the office their teams shared.  (They’re also depicted as opposites in terms of personality, with Stagg a dour, rude, arrogant newcomer and Krick as an upbeat glad hander who’d had Ike’s ear for years.)  It’s easy to see why Haig and Maras are quick to point to a similar rivalry between Eisenhower and General Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis), who though head of the operation’s ground forces, still resented being passed over for the supreme command.  (In one scene Eisenhower must remind Monty of his authority, as Stagg must remind Krick of his.)

As if the professional pressure on him weren’t enough, Stagg must contend with another issue emphasized by Haig and Maras.  Not only is his wife Liz (Tamsin Topolski) in the final days of a pregnancy, but the frail woman has been hospitalized—and the hospital has been bombed, with casualties reported.  Stagg, unable to contact the facility because of security limitations on outside contact, must wrestle with uncertainty about her while fighting his battle with Krick. 

Here, again, we’re dealing with dramatic license.  Stagg’s wife was pregnant at the time, but she wouldn’t deliver their second son until October of 1944, and there’s no evidence she was in such exceptional danger in June.

One can perhaps forgive the liberties, though, because in fact discordant weather forecasts, while not insignificant, prove a rather slender underpinning for a D-Day drama.  The other aspects of planning become almost incidental; only Montgomery’s huffing and puffing about postponement is given much screen time, with other major figures like Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory (Con O’Neill), Admiral Ramsay (Robert Portal) and General Bradley (Alexander Hanson) reduced to the level of virtual bystanders in cameo roles.  Given far more screen time is Kerry Condon, prim and proper as Eisenhower’s long-time driver and secretary Kay Summersby, who’s portrayed as an efficient, devoted aide.  There’s absolutely no intimation of any romantic relationship between her and the general, which has been the subject of largely discredited rumors over the years.

That leaves Stagg, Krick, Eisenhower and Montgomery as the major players here, and Scott’s Stagg is clearly the dominant figure.  The actor doesn’t shy from the character’s unattractive qualities, even as he captures the turmoil Stagg is hiding beneath his frigid Scottish exterior.  By contrast Messina overdoes Krick’s cocky American attitude, though of course in the end the two men patch over their differences to present a united front to Eisenhower about choosing June 6 for the landing.  (How they combined their very different approaches to do so isn’t satisfactorily explained—it seems that Krick merely defers to his colleague.)  Lewis has fun, as have others who’ve played the Field Marshal, with the vain, egotistical Montgomery.

Which leaves Fraser, who’s simply not very convincing as Eisenhower.  It’s not just that he doesn’t look or sound the part; it’s that he never manages the necessary gravitas, flailing about in the one scene in which he loses control over leaks in the planning (though the film omits mention of the incident regarding Major General Henry J.F. Miller, who was sent stateside for a drunken comment about it).  And he can do nothing with the scene in which Eisenhower practically genuflects toward Stagg as a storm suddenly casts clouds over a sunlit sky, proving the accuracy of his forecast, and both face each other in the rain as Krick sits gloomily in a church pew.

But in the last case one can’t blame Fraser too much, or Scott and Messina for that matter.  The sequence is so obviously contrived and poorly staged by Maras that no actors could have saved it.

Otherwise, the film is handsomely mounted, with Daniel Taylor’s production design and Liza Bracey’s costumes embodying the period well and Jamie Ramsay’s cinematography capturing it all expertly.  Maras, also serving as editor, inserts some archival footage and montages (of Exercise Tiger and the D-Day landing, for instance) effectively, but the overall pacing is sluggish, and Volker Bertelmann’s score is unmemorable.

One might add that the larger context of the planning of the D-Day invasion, and Stagg’s vital but hardly central role in it, are handled pretty well in a two-decades old telefilm, “Ike: Countdown to D-Day,” with Tom Selleck, of all people, doing a surprisingly subtle turn as Eisenhower.  The movie has its own failings—it’s very small-scaled (mostly shot in interiors), and practically hagiographical; moreover, some of the historical details are questionable.  (It also omits all mention of Summersby, no doubt because rumors of her role in Eisenhower’s life were rampant in 2004.)  But it still manages to generate more tension than “Pressure” does.

In sum, Maras’ film boasts a strong central performance by Scott, but otherwise comes across as a rather pedantic, strangely limited, curiously stolid depiction of one of the twentieth century’s greatest military operations.

On a lighter note, wouldn’t it have been nice for Eisenhower to have had General Patton’s chaplain on hand on June 4 to prepare a prayer for good weather like the one he so effectively wrote for Old Blood and Guts during the Battle of the Bulge—a scene so gleefully played by George C Scott in Franklin Schaffner’s film?