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| Images courtesy of Focus Features |
Australian writer-director Anthony Maras who won the Australian
AACTA Award in 2005 for his short film Azadi about the plight of Afghan
refugees in Australian prisons including but not limited to capturing a prison
riot on film mounted his first feature in 2018 with the dramatization of the
Taj Hotel terrorist attack in Mumbai entitled Hotel Mumbai. A director who tended towards harder hitting
historical dramas, the filmmaker’s career sat on hold for a few years before
becoming involved in the D-Day preparation WWII drama Pressure.
Curiously coming out shortly after Memorial Day 2026
commenced, this taut companion piece to like-minded behind-the-scenes WWII thrillers
as Darkest Hour and The Imitation Game tells the tense tale of
the 72 hours leading up to D-Day. With
intense planning, debates and fighting not on the front lines yet but in the
closed quarters of Great Britain with then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan
Fraser) sparring with meteorologist and Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew
Scott), Pressure like its title becomes something of a slow roasting
chamber piece of mounting anxiety and uncertainty with the fate of the world
hanging on the balance.
Based on the book of the same name by David Haig who co-wrote
the screenplay with director Maras, Pressure begins with a prologue chronicling
the failed Exercise Tiger rehearsal effort for D-Day which resulted in some 700
casualties which only labors itself upon the shoulders of Dwight D. Eisenhower
who forges ahead with the D-Day plan alongside General Bernard Montgomery (Band
of Brothers lead Damien Lewis) and General Krick (Chris Messina). Determined their plan to invade France’s
Normandy region on Omaha Beach will be a resounding success, their dreams of
victory are complicated by the arrival of Group Captain James Stagg who firmly
believes on the target date of military deployment the region will be hit hard
with crushing thunderstorms.
Met with skepticism and scorn from pretty much all involved,
watching the story unfold somehow reminded of Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge which
saw its heroic conscientious objector Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) equally
rejected by all until proving everyone wrong at the moment of truth. Much of the sense of command and battling of
strong minds and egos stems from the intense sparring between sensitive and
soft-spoken Andrew Scott and the blunt brutish undaunted anger of Brendan
Fraser as the oversized towering Dwight D. Eisenhower. Somehow tempering this tightrope walking
through firestorms of clashing personalities is Kerry Condon as Eisenhower’s
personal secretary Kay Summersby with the film hinting the disputed contention
that Summersby and Eisenhower may have been romantically involved also.
Lensed handsomely by All of Us Strangers cinematographer
Jamie D. Ramsay in 1.85:1, the film achieves a kind of amber lit warmth in many
of the scenes inside the war room. The
camera also at many times presses close to each actor’s face compounding the
sense of tension in the air you could cut with a knife. Then you have All Quiet on the Western
Front and A House of Dynamite composer Volker Bertelmann’s evocative
soundtrack underscoring the pot boiler simmering under the feet of the military
unit ready to deploy but hindered by the uncertainty of James Stagg’s
verdict. The only area where the film
seems to lose some of its steam, unfortunately, is the actual D-Day battle
itself which is Overlord like in how it integrates real footage with dramatization
but the battle sequences are so close to the framing and editing and look of Saving
Private Ryan it took me out of Pressure and plugged me into that
movie.
In any case, despite the stylistic and structural similarities
to Steven Spielberg’s game-changing WWII epic, Pressure for most of it
works as a very strong television film bumped up to theatrical release ala Trumbo
while being an obvious companion piece to WWII dramas fought at home instead of
on the battlefield ala The Imitation Game. Across the board the three central
performances are very good with many scenes of Andrew Scott holding back tears
and maintaining an air of professionalism even as he gets dire news about loved
ones over the phone. Brendan Fraser fits
perfectly into this world as Dwight D. Eisenhower in a WWII drama that doesn’t
break the mold, so to speak, but does work as a serviceable programmer about
one of the key moments that defined the fate of the war and perhaps humankind
itself. All in all, a good movie that
maybe should’ve come out a couple weeks sooner than appearing just a day after
Memorial Day, but I digress.
--Andrew Kotwicki
