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A High Pressure Environment

I will be honest, I’ve never really considered the role of meteorologists during war. I don’t suppose a whole lot of people have -it sounds like a fairly dull component of a battle plan: predicting the weather conditions for campaigns. One of the characters in this movie even points out how dull weathermen can be and that is true. What is the value in their contributions to something as serious as war?                                                                                         
Well, weather is something extremely serious. And when the stakes are high enough it turns out knowing the weather is a vital part of military strategy. That is what Pressure really hones in on, an adaptation of a 2014 stage production by David Haig. Haig certainly knows his way around the subject of war, having also penned the show My Boy Jack about the son of Rudyard Kipling fighting in the First World War. That was turned into a surprisingly effective TV movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, Carey Mulligan, and Haig himself, and Pressure likewise makes for an engaging movie -though nowhere near the kind of film it has been marketed as. D-Day itself is not a central feature, the story spending most of its time building up to it through dialogue and arguments about its gravity matched against the gravity of the unpredictable forces of nature in the north Atlantic. What StudioCanal perhaps doesn’t understand is that that material is sufficiently compelling on its own.
It’s June 1944, and the Allied forces are commencing the execution of D-Day following the disastrous trial Operation Tiger. Scottish meteorologist Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott) is summoned to Southwick House where the planning is headquartered to report to General Dwight Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) on the weather conditions for the impending battle. But while Ike’s loyal Colonel Krick (Chris Messina) predicts sunny temperatures based off of precedents in weather patterns over decades, Stagg is insistent that there will be catastrophic storms moving in on the morning of June 5th, a time military brass is adamant cannot be departed from for the invasion. Given his cold frankness and reliance on current barometric data that seemingly contradicts both tangible observance and tested methods, Stagg is brought into stark conflict with his American counterparts and Eisenhower himself -feeling the immense pressure of the campaign.
Stagg is an enjoyable character in that way occasionally seen from British writers casting one of their own in relief to Americans. He is standoffish, a bit dispassionate, but confident when we first meet him, very quick to casually dismiss the efforts of his colleagues like Krick, who have a bit of a cockiness about themselves due to their record, which Stagg on multiple occasions points out doesn’t say much when they often concerned comparably reliable climates in Egypt and North Africa to the instability of the English Channel and northern Europe. A focus on those kinds of details that the average person might not think about but make complete sense when raised is a low-key pleasure of the movie. And the tension between those facts as Stagg sees them and the necessity of the invasion’s timing is quite riveting. Stagg frequently has to give Eisenhower news that is unwelcome and isolating, yet for as frustrated as the general is with him and his attitude, Stagg is unwavering even through his intimidation.
And it is a deceptively strong, generally understated performance by Scott, who encapsulates well Stagg's sense of professionalism and frankness through an often introverted, quietly anxious personality. Despite how removed he is in the safe chateau, the cost of war weighs heavy on him -and it does come to him personally in a devastating manner late in the film, its emotional toll something he is forced to neglect in the urgency of the moment. Kerry Condon is also a delight as Eisenhower's assistant Kay while both Messina and Damian Lewis (as a cartoonishly pompous Bernard Montgomery) make for great obnoxious antagonists for Stagg to bluntly put down. But Fraser as Ike is more of a mixed bag. He captures well an intense stature but doesn't command the confidence that should go along with it. And certainly the stakes of the situation plays a part in this and the difficulty in having to make a swath of tough decisions -at this, Fraser makes an apt effort that comes across decently in spite of the movie not particularly focusing in on this theme. But he carries himself and even delivers some dialogue with a noticeable insecurity that doesn't quite fit either the real Eisenhower's purported reputation or the function of this piece, and feels a little like Fraser trying too hard to live up to the role.
Though the movie is set outside the scope of the warfare, director Anthony Maras does well at keeping it constantly present through the film's sense of tension and atmosphere. Clearly, there was a push by some higher force in the movie's production to accentuate the war's action where possible -opening on Eisenhower surveying the catastrophic aftermath of Operation Tiger and colouring the climax with a lower budget recreation of the Saving Private Ryan D-Day sequence -both of which feature heavily in the film's misleading marketing. But Maras otherwise keeps the gravity of the war to the charts and the data that Stagg in his men peruse and Haig's dialogue emphasizing the sense of uncertainty in the air. It builds real investment in Stagg's assertions as this prickly but highly competent underdog, and even at a point the personal emotional sacrifice he undertakes for the sake of the mission. And his vindication is nicely earned and executed, while showcasing in more visceral terms than we'd seen to that point the sense of gravity in the weather.
If you know a little of the history of D-Day, you know that it wasn't an easy resolution in the home-stretch here; and it is played with sufficient intensity. The choice to intercut the climax with the actual landing being carried out again feels a touch forced -even more so is the rush back to London by Stagg that plays out the most clichéd version of his storyline's ending -a rather emotionally hollow beat for as much as Scott tries to sell it. I also don't quite buy the somewhat facile theme of teamwork that blooms at the endgame in spite of all the conflict preceding it -it's not unbelievable in the circumstances but is played kind of hokey.
The title "Pressure" has of course a very cute double-meaning, but on both counts it is a good approximation of what this movie captures. For drawing its conflict on the ways in which weather impacts warfare, it is not nearly as dry as expectations might be for that subject -even apart from the war context, Stagg makes a good case for why weather patterns are important and fascinating. Where this film falls short are in the moments it imitates a more traditional war movie, but these are thankfully few. It's an unpredictable Pressure, but brighter than forecast.

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