Pressure (2026) – Review by Andrea Carnevali

Brendan Fraser as General Eisenhower and Andrew Scott as James Stagg

Pressure

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A very well-made, intelligent, handsome old-fashioned thriller

Sometimes the best way to see a film is to know absolutely nothing about it.That was certainly the case with Pressure, which I caught today at my local cinema.  I hadn’t seen a trailer, hadn’t read a synopsis and, beyond the title, had no idea what I was walking into.

Even the title itself turned out to be cleverer than I expected.

Yes, this is a film about pressure in the obvious sense: the pressure of responsibility, of impossible decisions, of knowing that thousands of lives may depend on what you say next. But it’s also quite literally about atmospheric pressure.Set during the tense 72 hours before D-Day, the film tells the remarkable true story of James Stagg, the British meteorologist tasked with advising General Eisenhower about whether the Allied invasion of Normandy should go ahead as planned on 5 June 1944.

Andrew Scott plays Stagg, and he’s superb. His performance is intensely controlled. This is a man carrying an almost unimaginable weight, yet Scott never turns him into an obvious bundle of nerves. Quite the opposite. His face can remain almost completely still while you sense everything bubbling underneath, like a pressure cooker slowly approaching boiling point.

And the circumstances could hardly be more stressful.Most of the military machine is ready to go. An American meteorologist, Irving Krick, is arguing that the weather will hold. Stagg, however, believes a huge storm is approaching and that sending the invasion force across the Channel could be catastrophic.

Of course, history has rather spoiled the ending for us.Even somebody like me, who would never claim to be an expert on military history, knows that D-Day happened on 6 June, not the 5th. So we know Stagg is right. And yet, remarkably, the film still generates an enormous amount of tension from watching him try to convince everybody else.

That’s partly because director Anthony Maras keeps everything so lean and focused. At around 100 minutes, Pressure doesn’t waste much time. The story keeps moving, people are constantly rushing in and out of rooms, telephones ring, weather charts are examined and decisions have to be made before the opportunity disappears altogether.

Despite being adapted from David Haig’s stage play, it rarely feels theatrical. The camera is constantly moving, the editing keeps the momentum alive and the music quietly turns rooms full of men discussing cloud formations into something resembling a full-blown thriller.

That may be the film’s greatest achievement.We’ve seen D-Day on screen many times before, usually from the point of view of the soldiers storming the beaches (I was at a preview of another new one just the other day, although I’m not allowed to say anything about it yet).

Pressure finds a completely different angle: the weather forecast.And there’s something wonderfully cinematic about watching something so apparently mundane become a life-or-death decision.

Brendan Fraser is excellent as Eisenhower too. I find myself liking him more and more as an actor. He gives Eisenhower weight without turning him into a marble statue: you can feel the responsibility of a man who knows that whichever decision he makes, people are going to die.

It’s not revolutionary cinema, nor is it trying to be.It’s simply a very well-made, intelligent, handsome old-fashioned thriller, built around a fascinating corner of history and elevated by a terrific performance from Andrew Scott.

Smart, small, tense and perfectly pitched. Proof that sometimes you don’t need explosions, battles or thousands of extras to make a gripping war film. Sometimes all you need is a barometer.Pressure is out right now.

Andrea Carnevali is a Bafta winning film maker who lives in Chiswick, and a co-creator of the Chiswick In Film festival.