‘Pressure’ Proves Potent Despite Pallid Elevator Pitch
- August Hammel
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Hollywood, the entity-slash-dream factory at large, is always being interrogated by its consumers. Often, the question revolves around whether it has run out of ideas. Look at May 2026’s box office and you could be inclined to agree: The Devil Wears Prada got the legacy-sequel treatment, there’s a Star Wars movie that’s actually a spin-off of a straight-to-streaming television show and Mortal Kombat received its fourth theatrical adaptation. Pressure comes as a reprieve through all the noise. As for the originality question, Pressure answers: yes and no.
On one hand, you can’t look at me and tell me that you’re sick and tired of movies about the meteorologists who were tasked with predicting the weather on D-Day. On the other hand, there will never be zero takers for investing in a World War II movie. Anthony Maras directs Pressure from a screenplay that he and David Haig adapted from Haig’s own play. Both projects revolve around Group Captain James Stagg and General Dwight D. Eisenhower in the days leading up to that fateful battle on the beaches of Normandy. The whole war is shrunk down to a chamber piece about the responsibility that those in power must carry and the importance of men yelling in rooms and others looking pensive in other rooms. In other words, Pressure is a ballad of the Dad Movie.
Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser play the respective captain and pre-presidential general and their little, pensive guy and big, loud guy routine, which is outlined in thick black marker within their first two interactions and tells you everything you should know about the film. They lead a small ensemble alongside a more-than-game Kerry Condon as Kay Sommersby, Eisenhower’s trusty chauffeur by way of right-hand woman, and Chris Messina as Irving P. Krick, a rival American meteorologist, while Damian Lewis chews scenery as Field Commander Bernard Montgomery. Everybody comes to play, looks respectable and has chemistry with one another. There is no “but” or “and” to anticipate.
Sometimes, a dad movie can be schlocky, but competency is the mark of the Dad Movie. Pressure will do unreal business with in-flight entertainment and will go triple platinum on lazy Sundays scrolling through what’s streaming in about five months. It will succeed because of its instant appeal 30 Rock-esque elevator pitch, but it will be re-watched because it’s effective. Maras is no showman. His direction is unflashy and workman-like, getting in and out of scenes with minimal pomp and circumstance, choosing to let his ensemble and Volker Bertelmann’s typically bombastic score do a lion’s share of the lifting – but he understands the bare necessities. This is not what could be lovingly dubbed as "Brit slop", a subcategory of British cinema cozy enough not to disturb anyone’s breezy Sundays with a tea, but it is cozy nonetheless. Maybe that isn’t the feeling that a WWII movie should evoke, but alas.
If any of this sounds backhanded, it’s not; rather, a meat-and-potatoes look into a meat-and-potatoes film. Fraser’s bellowing and Scott’s brooding are entertaining in equal measure and the fights about weather patterns go from foolish to fascinating almost instantly. The cheap digital look of the movie is unfortunate, but seems to be a symptom of a larger industry-wide apathy for texture rather than a singular carelessness, and Maras and his cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay create a properly somber atmosphere in the moral morass of the war through the stately manor most of the film takes place in. Still, there is such a thing as too comfortable.
The manor where the meteorological pontificating occurs becomes the film’s humble abode, but the film does tackle D-Day head-on. Despite a generally breezy and confident style, Pressure doesn’t really have a third act. Instead, in one of the more intriguing moments of the film – perhaps not even the intended climax –we are treated to an abridged version of the attack that seems haphazard, seemingly expecting the audience to fill in the gaps through memory of Saving Private Ryan (1998). All the way down to casting Andrew Scott, who briefly appeared in Spielberg’s D-Day epic, Pressure engages in an act of recollection through collective memory for its closing sequence.
As the smaller-scale version of the Dad Movie, before the higher-profile and bigger-budgeted comps like Disclosure Day or The Odyssey drop, Pressure stands out amid the summer crowd. If viewers are not inclined toward the flurry of controversy-free horror movies directed by Gen Z-ers, its existence as a movie for adults is worthy of distinction. Thankfully, Maras and company are deadset on delivering a movie about the responsibility to stay competent with competence.
-August
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