I had been following the talk about the movie Pressure for several months. I'm very familiar with the movie's subject - the struggle to deliver an accurate D-Day weather forecast to General Eisenhower and his staff. The story of the development of this forecast, and the decisions Eisenhower made based on these forecasts, is one of the fascinating pieces of the history of D-Day. It's also a story that's been well understood by historians for over 80 years. So nobody wanting to tell the story on film has to guess or make up anything. It's all there in the history books, and it's a fascinating tale with a number of scientific and military components. More than enough history material to fill a movie screen for two hours.
The story of the D-Day weather forecasts also has a huge built in audience. Every weather geek and every WWII history buff - a combined audience of millions - would stand in line to see a well crafted story. And this is just in the US. A well made movie would play very well in European theaters, too. The story is, after all, part of the story of their liberation from the Nazis. This is also a story where everyone gets to be a hero. There are no bad guys in this tale, just struggles to understand what the data is presenting, and then trying to fit the invasion around the only factor the Allies can't control - the weather.
So the writers and the director (who was part of the writing team) had a great story with plenty of historical resources. Those resources were not just facts and figures; there's also a lot of well done study on how Eisenhower and his senior commanders made the almost hour-by-hour decisions based on the developing weather picture. The decision processes they went through were fascinating, and are still studied today. But it's as though the movie production team didn't want to be bothered reading the material and building the story from it. Instead they got lazy and set up a fictitious personality conflict between the leading meteorologist, Group Captain Stagg, and an American meteorologist, Lieutenant Colonel Krick. By focusing on this conflict, the director almost completely misses the historical context and importance of the contributions these meteorologist made to the success of D-Day.
My problems with this movie go beyond just a crappy story crappily told. With just one exception the primary cast is excellent. Let's get the good ones out of the way. Damian Lewis, who played Major Dick Winters in the series Band of Brothers, plays Field Marshall Montgomery. Lewis understood his character better than any other cast member, and plays Montgomery to a 'T'. His is the standout performance in the movie. Kerry Condon plays Kay Summersby, Eisenhower's personal driver, secretary, confidant and, OK, alleged lover. While Condon's role in the movie fictitious, she plays it wonderfully, as the steadying influence standing between Eisenhower and Stagg. Yes, she's a made-up plot device, but it works.
But now we have to talk about Brendan Fraser. I like the guy, I really do. He's a talented actor (and has an Oscar to show for it), but Eisenhower just wasn't his role. To start, Fraser is still struggling with his weight. He looks bloated. Eisenhower was trim, with an athletic build. Next, Fraser just didn't seem to understand his character. Eisenhower, even when under enormous pressure (like the lead-up to D-Day) was calm and collected. He didn't yell at subordinates. He knew he needed to project an air of confidence and strong leadership to his staff and the thousands of American and British soldiers under his command. He had history altering decisions to make, and he knew that shouting and berating his staff was counter-productive. Unfortunately Fraser spends a lot of time shouting. Perhaps the worst interpretation of Eisenhower was the scene where Fraser re-creates Ike's D-Day 'Great Crusade' address to the troops. Eisenhower recorded it ahead of time for later broadcast, but most soldiers and sailors received it as a printed message handed to them on the evening of the invasion. Broadcasting the address to the ships would have alerted the Germans that the invasion was imminent. Yet the movie has Fraser, as Eisenhower, shouting into a microphone as the address is broadcast live to the invasion fleet just off the coast. Didn't happen. Perhaps it's unfair to blame Fraser for this - maybe he was just playing the scene as the director told him to. But Ike's recorded address was delivered in his deliberate, clipped, midwestern voice. Fraser would have done well to follow that example, rather than yelling in his naturally shrill voice. The production team just had to put their own spin on the event, and it was awful. About the only thing Fraser got right was Eisenhower's smoking. He was a chain smoker, and the habit eventually led to his death. A lot of actors today have difficulty faking the smoking habit - the 'affectation' of smoking. There are certain ways long-time smokers hold cigarettes, use lighters, etc. Fraser had this down pat, and he has Eisenhower smoking in almost every scene, which would have been accurate. Makes me wonder if Fraser is a smoker in real life.
Next up, uniforms. Jezus H. Christ, could these people not hire a competent costuming team that understood WWII uniforms and how they were worn? The errors were everywhere, and to an old soldier like me who spend over two decades in uniform, they were galling. Soldiers don't go around with loose neckties. They don't go to formal briefings or meetings wearing only partial uniforms and rolled up sleeves. They don't wander around with their uniform shirts unbuttoned almost to the waist. And female soldiers don't wear earrings, particularly drop earrings (which the Kay Summersby character is always seen with). The individual uniform items may have been correct - the shoes were the right color, the patches were sewn on correctly, etc.- but how the actors wore them was awful, and would have resulted in lots of ass-chewings in the real world.
So we have a bad script, bad direction, and a bad historical portrayal. Why, I mean, WHY?! It could have been so easy to put together a crisp and fascinating story based on the well-understood challenges. There were challenges in the science and art of weather forecasting, challenges in balancing weather against operational requirements, challenges in making sure the Germans were denied the ability to develop their own accurate weather picture. Nobody has tried to put this on film before, so it's not like the writers and director needed to find their own 'spin' to separate their movie from all the other D-Day weather flicks.
It really comes down to nothing more than poor story development, poor writing, and poor directing. I don't think Pressure will age well in comparison to all the excellent WWII films and series that have been released in the last 30 years. It all started with Saving Private Ryan, which established a new war movie production paradigm that demands good story and production accuracy. These movies portray real people that changed history. To do a sloppy job on even the small stories is an insult to their memory.
Stay sharp!
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