A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall…
DIRECTED BY ANTHONY MARAS/2026
Partway through the new D-Day-planning movie, Pressure, there’s a conversation between a woman and a weatherman about whether the weather is boring. He replies, “weathermen can be boring, but the weather is never boring”. This is a movie about a weatherman.
It’s the earliest days of June,1944, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) is in the final stretch of planning the major D-Day invasion in Normandy. The men are briefed and trained, the ships are in place, and everything is good to go. They just hope it doesn’t rain.
Historically, we know that Scottish meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott), who was recruited to the level of Captain, not only successfully predicted the ideal weather moment for the mass invasion, but had a hand in convincing Eisenhower and company that it was so. Avoiding the major storms that Stagg predicted was indeed key to this key operation. That’s the premise of Pressure– not only does the title apply strategically and offensively, it applies barometrically.
As though to ensure that we don’t overlook that all this is based on capital-H History, Pressure spends its first half repeating itself. Several times over, we get a scene in which Eisenhower calls Stagg and his irritant American meteorological cohort, Irving Krick (Chris Messina), into a room full of important people to have them state their diametrically opposing views of the D-Day forecast. Each time, with increasing tension, it goes like this:
KRICK: “Based on historical patterns, I say it will be blue skies and sunny!”
STAGG: “That’s preposterous! Historical patterns are useless in weather prediction. I say it will be stormy and untenable.”
Eisenhower wants to believe Krick, since that would mean the plan could continue unabated. But, dangit…. he knows he can’t just blow off Stagg.
Maybe now it a good time to mention that Pressure is adapted from a stage play of the same title, and boy, can you tell. David Haig wrote it in 2014, and it premiered in England in 2018. I assume that making Pressure into a movie is a much better way to reach old guys in recliners who are really into World War II but are thoroughly unlikely to go see a play. However, said old guys might already know that a whole lot of historical liberties have been taken by Haig and the film’s director, Australian Anthony Maras. One of my common refrains is, “DO NOT GET YOUR HISTORY FROM MOVIES!”, as they simply can’t be trusted for that. At the end of the day, the function of a movie is entertainment, not education. If education gets in the way of entertainment, entertainment wins. This remains true in the case of Pressure, though entertainment’s victory is squandered. That is, unless you enjoy watching military higher-ups seethe at each other in musty situation rooms for 100 minutes.
While the weather report for D-Day/Operation Neptune was crucial, Haig’s version simply isn’t accurate. I could forgive that were it not so self-important and draggy. Oscar winner Fraser acts the heck out of Ike, but no amount of makeup can make him look or sound like him. Closer to the mark is Scott as Stagg, who benefits from portraying a much lesser-known individual. Stagg was said to be a gloomy guy, which Scott nails. My research, however, has yet to uncover whether Stagg’s pregnant wife was on the cusp of giving birth when he was summoned to duty. In this story, we are told that the hospital in which she was set to deliver was bombed. Is she okay? Is she one of the casualties? We don’t know, and Stagg can’t allow himself to be distracted by such personal matters.
This is a rare criticism for me to log, but I believe that Pressure would live up its title a lot more potently if it spent just a little more time delving into the process of Operation Neptune. History tells us that the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944 was a tremendous feat of international strategic intricacies slotting together just right in the exact moments necessary. Details like that can function beautifully in movies, but Pressure treats the invasion scheduling the way one would schedule an outdoor carnival- it’s a pretty big event that either gets rained out, or it doesn’t. This movie needs more. It needs audiences to grasp the monumental ask of punting the strike, and why it must be punted anyway.
If Pressure is prescient in any meaningful way, it might be in the depiction of a classic conservative such as Eisenhower forced to choose between the findings of modern science (Stagg’s forecast) and what he wants to believe (Krick’s forecast). That, though, is buried under the wood-trimmed veneer of high-stakes point-proving and argument-winning. One of Stagg’s points, however, is proven early on, and remains unwavering: that weathermen can, truly, be boring.