Movie Review: Pressure

World War II is the most written about and important event in human history. This war caused the deaths of 74-82 million people (military and civilian) and changed the direction of the world, focusing on preventing a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

Now, 81 years after the end of that horrendous war, a new World War II movie, "Pressure", has been released about the decisions regarding weather for the Normandy Invasion, which occurred on June 6, 1945. The Normandy Invasion is the largest military invasion in human history, including 326,000 troops, 5000 ships, and 13,000 aircraft. Without this invasion's success 81 years ago, the Allies would not have won the war, or it would have taken more years and many more lives.

General Dwight Eisenhower, played very well by Brendan Fraser, had the weight of the entire world on his shoulders when he was put in charge of a huge logistical nightmare of an enormous invasion in the hope of ending the worst war in history. One of the most important decisions was to decide when to invade, based on favorable weather conditions. Eisenhower hired Meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott) to use the comparatively low-level science of the time, which included no satellites and computers, while using surface weather stations, weather balloons, radar, air mass (front) theory, and mathematical forecasting.

The current Meteorologist on Eisenhower's staff, Irving Krick, (Chris Messina), was using weather patterns from years or decades ago to try to predict weather that was going to happen in a few days, while Stagg believed in a much more scientific approach that was by far more accurate. The huge arguments between Krick and Stagg are some of the best parts of this movie. The story of this film made it amazing to realize that the success of the most important invasion in history and the lives of 326,000 men was the result of the scientific genius of James Stagg and his refusal to tell Eisenhower and his staff, "what they wanted to hear" about invading on June 5th. More importantly, there was the miracle last-minute discovery of a small window of time that made an invasion on June 6 possible, despite the arrival of two major storms. This discovery was only plausible because of the final agreement and collaboration between Stagg and Krick.

Much like the movie "Hidden Figures", released in 2016, this movie reveals to the world a person we all should have known about for decades. Without the genius of Katherine Johnson, NASA would have never made it into space, and without the genius of James Stagg, the world might have never been able to defeat Germany in World War II.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie of 85% is night high enough for such an important movie about World War II. My rating is 95%, and a very strong recommendation to see this outstanding film.