PRESSURE Review

No one has ever made a film about weather forecasting before, and somehow, inexplicably, it is one of the most tense things I have watched this year. With Pressure, Anthony Maras has taken a story about a Scottish meteorologist arguing with an American meteorologist over whether it will rain on June 5th, 1944, and turned it into something that had me actually leaning forward in my seat. The fate of the entire Allied invasion of Europe rests on a man reading cloud formations correctly.

Cinema.

Andrew Scott plays Dr. James Stagg, the meteorologist who told Eisenhower that the planned D-Day date was going to be a catastrophe and that everyone should please listen to him. He is extraordinary in only the way that Andrew Scott tends to be extraordinary, which is quietly and completely in a way that makes you forget you are watching a performance at all. Stagg is not particularly warm or easy to like. He is prickly and certain and not especially interested in managing anyone's feelings about his certainty. Scott plays all of that without softening a single edge and still somehow makes you utterly desperate for this man to be believed. There is a scene where he takes a phone call, and the camera just stays on his face, saying nothing and doing everything, and I thought about it for the rest of the evening.

Brendan Fraser plays Eisenhower, which is a sentence I was not expecting to type, and he is better than you might fear and occasionally as good as you might hope. He does not look much like Eisenhower, and he is sometimes a touch too openly emotional for a man historically known for his composure, but he conveys the specific weight of someone who has to make a decision that will kill thousands of people regardless of which option he picks, and that lands.

Kerry Condon continues her remarkable run of being the best thing in every film she appears in, while the film itself forgets to give her enough to do, which is becoming a pattern I find genuinely frustrating on her behalf. Chris Messina, as the rival American meteorologist, is doing reliable, grounded work. Damian Lewis as Montgomery is doing absolutely the most and clearly having a tremendous time doing it.

The film comes from a stage play, and you can feel that in the best possible way, all dense dialogue and clashing certainties in tight rooms, but Maras opens it up enough that it never feels airless.

A hundred minutes. No padding. No speeches about the importance of what they are doing. Just two men disagreeing about the weather while the world waits.

It turns out that was more than enough.

🍿 SCORE = 82 / 100