Kyle Smith didn't much care for Pressure, a film about the preparation for D-Day which I had been hoping to like. Not so much, now.
A sharp intake of breath greeted the news that Brendan Fraser had agreed to play the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in the D-Day drama Pressure. Brendan Fraser? As Dwight David Eisenhower? ....Mr. Fraser, the Canadian-American star of George of the Jungle and The Mummy, and an Oscar winner for The Whale, shares top billing with the man playing his chief meteorologist, the recently commissioned RAF Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott). ....The commander of ground troops, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, tries to bigfoot [Stagg], insisting the attack must go ahead at all costs. The normally sturdy Damian Lewis (who, at the other end of events, was among the first Americans to parachute into Normandy years ago, on Band of Brothers) plays Monty as an almost comically out-of-touch figure who is prepared to sacrifice thousands of lives on the altar of his vanity. ....If Mr. Lewis’s portrayal is wince-inducing on one end, Mr. Scott’s is almost equally unfortunate. I’ve never seen the latter give a weak performance before....For anyone with a passing acquaintance with military ways, the movie is eye-gougingly painful, with senior officers lounging around half out of uniform, ties askew or missing, their headgear AWOL when they go outdoors. Capt. Stagg treats Lt. Col. Krick like a private and rarely addresses Eisenhower himself as “Sir.” When Montgomery pops in, Stagg doesn’t even stand up, let alone treat him with one-tenth of the deference due a man who was by then one of the most revered figures in the history of the British military.It’s as if every actor on hand were told to behave like a vain, semi-insolent millennial. ....The mushy score, absurdly pompous speeches, and Victorian staginess harmonize with Mr. Fraser’s conception of his role as the emoter in chief. Eisenhower, the very model of quiet composure amid unfathomable stress, this time comes across as a petulant, often rageful ninny who has to be told, again and again, that the weather near the English Channel is volatile. Ike had lived in England for two years by this point.Today our historical memory of the 1940s stands in severe jeopardy, given that hardly anyone living remembers the war years. For decades thereafter, though, people who knew them well made the war pictures. If Pressure is any indicator, we might be in a new era when what Ike dubbed the Crusade in Europe will be reimagined as melodramatic schlock. (more)
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