Nerds win the war in Pressure, which entertainingly tells the story behind the D-Day landings. How, when you’re launching the biggest seaborne invading force in human history, do you make sure the weather isn’t going to destroy your armada on the high seas?
Whether the gap between England and France actually counts as the high seas is questionable. It’s only 20-odd miles but they are difficult to navigate at the best of times. All that Atlantic Ocean on one side and North Sea on the other trying to squeeze through a bottleneck, with storms liable to barrel in from off the Atlantic at any time.
That’s the challenge that’s been set for Group Captain James Stagg, a prickly British meteorologist, working in uneasy collaboration with loose and amiable American Colonel Krick. Stagg is all about up-to-the-minute data – meteorological stations, weather balloons, reconnaissance flights, the temperature of air at the surface and up in the clouds, salinity readings, and so on. Krick relies on old historical charts to make his forecasts. Facts versus a good story – one taking science forward, and to an extent inventing the field of meteorology as he goes, the other using ancient data to buff his own reputation, when he’s not playing boogie-woogie piano to his appreciative colleagues.
It matters, this forecasting, because you can’t assemble huge numbers of Allied troops on the South coast of England and then just leave them there waiting for the weather to improve. A German reconnaissance plane will spot them. Factor in also that the tides needs to be right. And it has to be a full moon. All these factors will coincide somewhere, it’s hoped, around 5 June 1944. But as that date starts to loom, Stagg’s data begins to suggest that the leafy and pleasant summer afternoons England has been enjoying are about to be disturbed by a violent storm raging in from the West. Wait, Stagg says. Krick, citing historical precedent telling a more favourable story, says go, go, go.
If you don’t know how that works out, I’ll not tell you. Let’s just say that data is king here, and that it’s a British movie. In fact if you liked The Imitation Game – Brits decode Nazi signals and hasten the end of the war – this is the same story told more or less in the same way. That is: dependably and entertainingly. Kenneth More and Dickie Attenborough might pop up at any minute.
Instead we have Andrew Scott as tech nerd Captain Stagg and poor Chris Messina as the bumptious Colonel Krick, while Brendan Fraser delivers gravitas as General Eisenhower, on whose say-so D-Day is going to be launched. Damian Lewis does a shrewd turn as Field Marshall Montogomery, inclining his performance to the modern re-appraisal of Monty as a bit of a liability. Pinging about between all these is Kerry Condon as Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s personal assistant and the liaison between all the male egos. Nice work by Condon. Holding everything together, she’s almost the star of the show.
Brits who keep calm and carry on; Americans and their “overpaid, oversexed and over here” swagger. We know what’s going on here. There is no place for a counterfactual – just how important was D-Day in the scheme of things, for instance. Scott’s James Stagg is the hero and Scott gets the big actorly speech that will prove to be decisive in the scheme of things, handled brilliantly by Scott.
Like a lot of British war films, it hums along as if made for Sunday afternoon viewing. The sort of movie that you might doze off halfway through, but then wake up and know exactly what’s going on. Knowing what’s coming your way can be a good thing – it’s the film’s whole point, in fact.
Pressure – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2026
