Pressure
VERDICT: (Four stars out of five) Thunderously good
The story at the heart of this absorbing film is true, or mostly true, but if it weren’t you’d think it had been machine-tooled to appeal to a British audience. After all, it focuses on two of our three great preoccupations: the Second World War and the weather. Only the Royal Family is missing.
Adapted by David Haig from his own stage hit, it stars Andrew Scott as Group Captain James Stagg, the doughty Scottish meteorologist who advises General Dwight D Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) not to launch Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, on Monday, June 5, 1944.
That is the date Eisenhower has designated as D-Day and even a short postponement could be calamitous. Such a colossal military enterprise cannot possibly be kept secret from the Germans for much longer. But Stagg’s analysis of the available data has convinced him that a major storm, brewing in the Atlantic, is heading for Normandy.
