Editor’s Note: Freeline Media movie critic Mike Fried loves war movies, especially unique ones. And today he reviews one of those unique war films. Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
UNDER PRESSURE
I am a big fan of war movies; but my sweet spot is war movies that don’t take place in battles but are about things that surround the battles. For example, The Great Escape is about POWs escaping from a prisoner of war camp, Dr. Strangelove because it’s funny and it deals with the strategy of avoiding World War III and The Man Who Never Was and Operation Mincemeat about the British plan –created by Ian Fleming — to take a corpse and put fake papers on him to mislead the Nazis about the Allies’ strategy about invading Sicily.
So when I heard about this movie just a week ago, I said, “I have to see this.” Ok, I’m old and I don’t spend my life on the internet. I was equally surprised that even though the movie opens on this Friday (May 29), there was an early access Memorial Day showing and I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off my Memorial Day by war film watching.
Based on David Haig’s 2014 stage play, this movie tells the true and basically untold story of the conflict between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Captain James Stagg, a meteorologist who is sent to advise Ike about weather conditions for D-Day. Ike and the Allied commanders are hell bent for leather to launch D-Day on June 5, 1944. And sparks fly over a 72-hour period as Stagg is called on to make the most consequential weather forecast in the history of the world and he is locking horns with Allied leadership (including Ike) when he says that June 5 would be the worst day to launch the attack. The problem is if the weather sucks there can’t be the largest ever seaborne invasion. Also, if there is a delay there is a risk that the Germans will find out about the plans.
The movie is terrific and is aided by three great performances. Andrew Scott is terrific (he always is) as Stagg. He is distraught when he hears that the hospital his wife is in (to deliver their child) is bombed and he can’t find out whether she’s alive or not. But he is a soldier and he “keeps calm and carries on.”
Kerry Condon is also terrific (she always is) as Ike’s trusted confidant, Kay Summersby and she plays the role as the heart of the piece, trying to navigate her role to duty but also as a compassionate person. And Brendan Fraser swings for the fences as Eisenhower. Sure, some of his performance seems cartoonish – but I think it’s a great performance; it’s just that Fraser doesn’t sound like Ike and I felt that disconcerting – but for the most part it is a totally committed performance because while Stagg is making the weather call, it is ultimately Ike’s decision and he will be the one who will be remembered for a bad call or a good call, not Stagg. And so he has to make the tough decisions, and he has to lash out at his subordinates because he is the Allied Commander. Fraser wears Ike’s worry on his face so well.
I should point out that Fraser definitely doesn’t sound like Ike; but he has a commanding presence on screen and quite frankly there aren’t many behind the scenes films of Ike going ballistic, so Fraser was free to make the role his own.
But like any good film there needs to be antagonists and, in this film, it is U.S. Colonel Krick played by Chris Messina and Damian Lewis as British General Bernard Law Montgomery. Krick, also a meteorologist, believes the weather will be clear based upon past historical forecasts and his conflicts with Stagg are great. But Messina plays him as a guy just out of his depth and relying on his past successes with Ike. Lewis as Montgomery is also well played as the General who believes that everything must proceed as planned, regardless of the weather. He plays the role as a total naysayer and incurs Ike’s wrath.
It could have been stagey since it’s based upon a stage play; but it has a real feel of one of the aforementioned strategy films. And yet, the direction by Anthony Maras totally belies the film’s origins as a play. There are scenes that take it out of the staginess of the piece. The production design was fantastic and the Allied Headquarters looked vintage circa 1944 – it looks like it was filmed at Southwick House, Ike’s actual Forward headquarters and while there are scenes of the Allied landings there are also many scenes that appear to be actual films shot on D-day that have been color graded and restored. And all of this gives the film a wide landscape.
It is definitely a film that should be on people’s radars.
One of my friends, Roger, said, “Do we need another World War II story?”
All I know is we needed this one.
WATCH IT!
4/5
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
