'Pressure' review: WWII weather movie finds stormy skies overhead

Adam Graham, Detroit News Film CriticThu, May 28, 2026 at 4:01 AM UTC

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Brendan Fraser as General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Andrew Scott as Captain James Stagg in director Anthony Maras' "Pressure," a Focus Features release.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower allegedly told John F. Kennedy that the reason the Allies won WWII was because "we had better meteorologists than the Germans," it's possible that Ike was cracking a joke.

But the dead serious "Pressure" takes this assertion as gospel, and crafts a stiff drama around the weather on D-Day, and the brave men — or the brave man, in this case — who predicted it.

It's the kind of premise you'd expect to see on "SNL": In a world so overindexed on WWII movies, one man attempts to craft an Oscar-worthy biopic of the war's true unsung hero — the weatherman.

But "Pressure" isn't joking, at least on purpose, and director Anthony Maras does a good job of almost making viewers forget how ridiculous "Pressure's" premise is.

"This is a true story" reads the card at the introduction of the film, letting viewers know they're in for a Serious History Lesson.

We meet Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott, who is excellent), who goes to work for Eisenhower (Oscar winner Brendan Fraser) in the days leading up to D-Day, which is set for June 5, 1944.

June 5, you say? If that sounds just slightly off, there's your spoiler alert that something's about to change. And there goes any drama in the film, as a showdown brews between Stagg and rival weather guy Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina), a happy-go-lucky type who is Ike's favorite because he tells him what he wants to hear.

And what Ike wants to hear is that all systems are go for June 5. Krick, an American, says go for it, and he has the historical data to back it up, using past weather maps as an indicator of future patterns.

But Stagg's got a different set of measurements, and he says it's going to rain on June 5, and that Ike better back off on the planned invasion, unless he wants a real storming of Normandy on his hands.

One guy says June 5 is a go, the other guy says no. And since The Weather Channel or the Apple Weather app aren't things yet, Ike's gotta make a decision on who to trust.

And to hear "Pressure" tell it, this, above all, is the biggest decision Eisenhower faced in the entire D-Day ordeal.

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It's not that "Pressure" — the double meaning of the title only adds to its unintentional humor — is undercooked. Scott gives a convincing, committed performance, and Kerry Condon is a steady presence as Kay Summersby, Eisenhower's secretary.

It's that the movie doesn't seem to realize how funny it is, which is accentuated by Fraser's performance. His exaggerated outbursts, yelling and physical object throwing all come off as extremely hammy Serious Actor tics, especially in a movie where everyone else has dialed it down a notch or two. He's ready to go full camp, but no one else is joining him.

"Pressure" does hold its weight as a movie about the burden of delivering bad news. It's not easy to be the stick in the mud that's not going along with the plan, the guy who has to speak up when no one else wants to hear it. Silence is much easier.

That idea deeply resonates today, when speaking up against the machine, any sort of machine, can be costly. People don't want to hear it. Solidarity can be difficult when you got cool stuff to lose.

But "Pressure" is attempting to take a footnote and make it the headline. WWII was full of heroes doing extremely heroic things, and there have been no shortage of movies exploring those people and those things from every angle and facet.

In a larger movie about D-Day, there's a great two-scene performance to be made about the weather guy who got it right when no one else did. Anything more is overcast, er, overkill.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'Pressure'

GRADE: C

Rated R: for war violence, bloody images, some strong language, and smoking

Running time: 100 minutes

In theaters

This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: 'Pressure' review: WWII drama asks, 'so how was the weather on D-Day?'

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