Pressure Movie Review. Yes, we do need another D-Day Movie

 

Pressure 2026

Yes, we do need another D-Day movie

I walk a lot. I check NOAA's forecast five times before heading out. If there's a ten percent chance of rain, I have a Gore-Tex slicker in my daypack. I'm always over-prepared for weather. One day I was walking down Ratzer Road, a road I've walked hundreds of times. I passed wide lawns and suburban McMansions, some of them costing a million dollars. I felt carefree. That did not last.

Boom. In the time it took me to type the word "boom," everything changed. The sky turned black. Forty-foot evergreens swayed so drunkenly I feared they'd lash me like the tail of a lunging tiger. Pelting hail obscured my vision. With every step I pushed against a locked door – the wind was that determined to prevent me from moving. I recognized that this is the kind of weather that kills. I frantically sought a nook where I could take shelter in this, not my neighborhood, and, again, that fast, it was all over. The sky was suddenly dove-gray. The hail relaxed to a light drizzle. The Apocalypse was canceled.

My best guess is that I was stuck in a dangerous phenomenon called a "microburst." Microbursts damage structures, cause car accidents and plane crashes, and they do kill. Ultimately, though, what it was, was weather.

In Indiana, after a tornado, I heard of a grandfather trying to hold back his grandson, to no avail. The tornado pulled the tyke out the window. In 2011, in Paterson, NJ, I was evacuated during Hurricane Irene. The Passaic River was coming up through the floorboards. Within hours the entire neighborhood, for a mile around, was under water. In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy, for most of two weeks, we had no electricity and substandard tap water. In 2021, thirty New Jerseyans died during Hurricane Ida. One victim drowned on the very non-aquatic Lackawanna Avenue, near a Best Buy and a Barnes and Noble. Two people tried to rescue her, but these Good Samaritans had to themselves be rescued by fire department crews. Her body was never found.

Weather.

We humans have dominated much of nature. We have extended average lifespans, conquered smallpox, and manipulated the landscape to our whim. But we are still mere playthings in the hands of weather. A new film, Pressure, examines the impact of weather on a history-making event: D-Day.

Perhaps no human accomplishment supersedes D-Day as an expression of humanity's power. D-Day was the largest seaborne invasion in history. On June 6, 1944, almost 160,000 Allied troops landed on Normandy's beaches. These included troops from the United Kingdom, Canada, and twelve other Allied nations. Over 7,000 naval vessels and 12,000 aircraft participated. An estimated 100,000 French resistance fighters coordinated, via coded messages, with overseas planners and carried out crucial and meticulous preparatory operations behind enemy lines. For example, the French derailed Nazi supply trains inside tunnels. Repairing a train derailment inside a tunnel is much harder than doing so in an open field. By the end of June, Allies had delivered 570,000 tons of supplies. By the end of August, two million Allied troops were in France.

In spite of this display of human might, D-Day's planners were still subject to weather. The new film, Pressure, makes this vulnerability to weather abundantly clear. If the Allies had attempted D-Day on the wrong day, with the wrong weather, D-Day might have failed, and the attempt to defeat Nazi Germany would have gone very differently.

Some people are not impressed by any of this. D-Day movies like Pressure, the naysayers insist, are all about American chauvinism, jingoism, and blindness. They insist that there should be more movies about the Battle of Stalingrad. There's even a meme expressing this wish. A scowling man sits alone at a conference table. Next to him sits an attractive blonde; a bank of news microphones point at her. The lonely man no one wants to talk to is captioned "Battle of Stalingrad." The woman receiving all the attention is captioned "D-Day."

I asked Google, "Of the Battle of Stalingrad, and D-Day, which had the bigger impact on the outcome of World War II?" Google's AI function argued for the Battle of Stalingrad, concluding that it "served as the definitive turning point of the conflict … the defeat at Stalingrad destroyed Germany's strategic offensive capabilities and made an Allied victory all but inevitable …  The Soviets destroyed the German Sixth Army ... costing the Axis over 1 million casualties. Germany never regained the strategic offensive after this defeat." Google did concede, though, that "D-Day had an immense geopolitical impact. By landing in France, the Western Allies ... ensured the liberation and democratization of Western Europe, preventing the Soviet Union from occupying the entire continent."

At Stalingrad, Russians and other Soviet citizens, including Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Tatars, and even Volga Germans fought heroically and endured unimaginable hardships. They deserve every accolade. Stalingrad's defenders stood between their beloved home and family and friends and an advancing genocidal force from Hell that was directly targeting them. Before Stalingrad, German Nazis had committed atrocities against Soviet citizens. For just one example, Nazis murdered 3.3 million Soviet POWs, often by penning them outside, naked, without any shelter whatsoever, and starving them to death or allowing them to die of disease and exposure to cold and heat.

A Stalingrad defender had no choice but to fight. He, or she, was fighting against pure evil. What the Stalingrad defender was fighting for is complicated. Fighting for home and family is understandable. But the USSR, like its recent ally, Nazi Germany, was itself genocidal and expansionist. After its victory, the USSR advanced into other countries not to liberate them, but to enslave them.

Red Army soldiers advancing westward didn't just defeat Nazi soldiers. They also committed mass rapes, as recorded by Russian eyewitnesses, including playwright Zakhar Agranenko, war correspondent  Natalya Gesse, and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and as documented by historian Antony Beevor. Gesse said, "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty." and not just Germans. My aunt in Slovakia was gang raped by Red Army soldiers. "Tens of thousands of ... Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian and Yugoslav women" were "brutalized" by the Red Army, writes historian John Connelly. Solzhenitsyn had been a Red Army captain. He witnessed the Red Army commit atrocities against civilians. He wrote Prussian Nights on a bar of soap while a prisoner in a Soviet Gulag. He would memorize disappearing lines and then write new ones on the soap. It's an unbearable read, including lines like "The little daughter’s on the mattress / Dead. How many have been on it / A platoon, a company perhaps?"

Enemy at the Gates, from 2001, is the only big-budget, all-star, English-language feature film about Stalingrad. There's a scene that can be compared to the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. In both films, soldiers are on boats, being transported to fight Nazis. In the Enemy scene, an officer reads to troops as Nazi planes shoot at them. The officer says he is reading a letter from a Russian mother to her son. "Your father is dead," the man says. "Your brothers are dead." When some Russian soldiers jump off the boat in futile attempts to escape Nazi gunfire, the Russian officer shoots them. These conscripts have nothing to lose, and they have no choice but to fight. Their family is dead, and either Nazis will kill them, or their own Russian officers will.

I have no connection to D-Day. My father fought in the Pacific theater. Thanks to deals struck between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, my relatives in Eastern Europe were not liberated by D-Day soldiers. Rather, in 1944-45, they were invaded again, this time by Soviets who would retain power till 1989. Though I'd love to go, I have never visited Normandy's beaches or cemeteries. Even so, I can't contemplate D-Day without shedding tears.

Every year, when June 6 comes around, I pray for one man. In my heart, I call him up as I hold my rosary in my hands. I don't attempt to name him. He knows who he is, and he knows that it is for him that I pray.

He is maybe from Kansas or San Francisco or Texas or Vermont. He is maybe nineteen or twenty or twenty-three, how old one of my brothers was when he was killed. This young American man for whom I pray is a descendant of Revolutionary War heroes, or heroes from the Union Army, and he doesn't speak any languages other than English. Or maybe he knows a smattering of "kitchen Polish" or Italian or Yiddish or Greek, picked up from his immigrant grandma; maybe his family only recently arrived in America. This young man loves his country and he had no plans of ever leaving. He loves his hometown. His favorite teacher. His girlfriend, or maybe boyfriend. His bicycle, his car; his horse or his dog. Hot dogs, fried chicken, or apple pie. He likes to play sports or read books in the local library. He has a favorite tree, a favorite rock, in some wooded spot. He likes to tell jokes or hear them. Maybe he's a jerk. Maybe he picks on other kids in school, or gets into trouble, or has acne or is confused and doesn't know what to do with his life.

The walls of the American soldier's home are still vertical and intact. Cross-stitched embroideries decorate those walls and still bespeak homespun values. Corn ripens to gold in fields with no pockmarks from bombs or graves. His girl can wear lipstick and high-heeled shoes and walk to the Saturday night dance and not worry about crossing paths with soldiers from the master race who would reap some "spoils of war" before killing off their "subhuman" Slavic victim.

Everything was good at home. But they told him to go, to do his duty to God and country, and so he went. He has no interest in Europe or its stupid wars, just like the last war, that ended just twenty-six years earlier. Why can't these Europeans solve their own problems, he wonders. But his country called, and he, unquestioningly, answered. He kissed his mom or his girlfriend or his dog goodbye and promised he'd be back soon. His mom imagines, over and over again, the favorite meal she will cook for him the day he gets back. It gives her a smile and makes the days pass more quickly till her son returns.

They put him on a boat, he traveled, he got off the boat, and some Nazi bastard shot him, and he died while his boots still soaked in Normandy's salty surf. His mom cried, and then changed. She was never the same. His girl married her second choice, a guy who got a 4-F and never went overseas. She kept a black-and-white photo of her deceased lover. He's in his uniform with the American flag in the background. He's looking spiffy and fresh and ready for anything. After she passed, her kids were going through her photos, didn't recognize this one, and tossed it.

The D-Day soldier I describe above, unlike the Russian soldiers on the boat in Enemy at the Gates, did not embark from a home terrorized by atrocity, and, again, unlike Enemy at the Gates, it is highly unlikely that an Allied officer would have immediately shot him if he froze in fear. Unlike in Enemy at the Gates, the D-Day soldier is not fighting for a nation that will enslave those whose territory they control. Rather, after the war, his country, with the Marshall Plan and NATO, will be generous in its work for democracy and peace in the territory for which it sacrificed blood and treasure.

The only word that captures the act of the young man I pray for is "sacrifice." "Sacrifice" is one of the most frequently used words in relation to D-Day, along with "heroism" and "courage." I admire heroism and courage. It's the third word that reduces me to tears, and illuminates my soul, when all else is dark. The word "sacrifice" is very much a part of my Catholic tradition. As a kid, I rejected the concept. Why did martyrs have to die? Why did Jesus have to suffer? Why can't everything be fun and nice?  As an adult, I recognize that sacrifice is, yes, difficult, but it is also transcendentally beautiful. In John 15:13, Jesus describes such self-sacrifice as the "greatest love."

Given a choice, I'll bet that the young man for whom I pray would have preferred not to sacrifice his life. But he did. His sacrifice, and the sacrifice of others like him, is all the more remarkable because most of us will never know the names of most of these men. Glory? He received scant glory. There's no statue to him, as an individual. People don't name their kids after him. There was maybe a tiny notice in a hometown newspaper. After reading it, even his friends, as poet Robert Frost wrote, "since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

My grandmother lost her firstborn, Mary, an infant, in the 1918 influenza pandemic. When I was composing my mother's obituary, I made sure to mention Mary as one of my mother's siblings. I'm aware of Mary; I think of her as my aunt; but I don't feel sad for her. Somehow dying as an infant doesn't hit me as hard. Mary knew happiness in her mother's arms, and no sadness or disappointment. My brother's death, at 23, haunts me. That age is a fulcrum. Childhood, with its generic milestones – potty training, learning to read, puberty – is over. The individual biography is about to unreel with the pent-up force of internal character and the life heretofore experienced. Falling in love, getting married, starting a career, all rush out of the soul and fate. To die at that age feels worse, somehow, than to die earlier or later.

Some people say, "Thank you to these men who made possible the life we enjoy now." These expressions of gratitude focus on the wealth and freedom found in the West. My "thank you" is different. I thank this guy, less for exterior, material circumstances, although, of course, our Western freedom and abundance are nice. I, though, thank this nameless man for my interior life. I want to feel sorry for myself. I want to conclude that people just suck. I want to feel that my efforts are futile and meaningless. He stands there and says, "Uh uh. Ya gotta keep going." He's one of the few people I allow to talk to me that way.

D-Day belongs, not just to America or to the other Allies, not just to the Greatest Generation or to Baby Boomers. D-Day, like Thermopylae, belongs to the world. Telling and retelling this story to upcoming generations is a gift. So, yes to D-Day movies.

***

Pressure was directed and co-written by Anthony Maras, who last directed the 2018 film Hotel Mumbai, about a terror attack in India. Pressure is based on the stage play written by David Haig, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Runtime is one hundred minutes. It opened in the US on May 29, 2026.

Pressure is set in Southwick House, in southern England, in June, 1944. The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, or SHAEF, is planning D-Day. Personnel include leaders of land, air, and sea military forces, and multiple lower level supportive staff. The American, Dwight D. Eisenhower, makes the final decisions. Ships, planes, and men are ready to go. Any delay will sabotage the element of surprise. Final requirements include a low tide, so that the Czech hedgehogs – that is, metal anti-tank barriers – that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel ordered placed on Normandy's beaches are visible. A successful D-Day also requires a full moon and clear skies, so that pilots and paratroopers can reach targets; and relatively fair weather so that landing craft and men are not swamped by waves. Only a handful of dates in June present these possibilities, including June 5 and June 18, and a few dates around those times. Pressure focuses on SHAEF's need for an accurate weather forecast, and two competing meteorologists who use different methods and offer completely different predictions. The title is a reference to air pressure, but also to the incredible pressure those planning D-Day are under.

At Rottentomatoes, Pressure receives an 86% positive processional reviewer score, and a 95% fan reviewer score. Reviewers praise the film for finding a new angle – that is, weather – in its treatment of the well-worn theme of D-Day. Though everyone knows that D-Day was, ultimately, a success, critics say that Pressure manages to be a tense and suspenseful film.

National Public Radio reports, "For all the prior cinematic depictions of storming bunkers and camaraderie under fire, Pressure offers us the quiet heroism of rational restraint in the figure of [meteorologist] James Stagg, who weathered his inner storms and bore the courage to be disliked."

Reviewers are split when it comes to Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower. Fraser is taller and heavier than Eisenhower. Fraser, a popcorn movie star from twenty years ago, has never played a similar role. The Wall Street Journal says that Fraser "isn't like Ike." Fraser's Ike is "overly emotive … a petulant, often rageful ninny" in a film that is "melodramatic schlock."

On the other hand, Mick LaSalle in The San Francisco Chronicle says Pressure "turns D-Day’s weather forecast into an irresistible war drama … Fraser captures something essential about Eisenhower almost immediately. He has the right shade of blue eyes and a faraway look, like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders."

Amateur reviewers have also warmed to Pressure. Typical quotes from their reviews include: "Very powerful ... reminds us of sacrifices that were made for our freedom:" "We loved this movie! Not only was it exceptionally well made, we actually learned a lot about history. Highly recommended!" "Stunning … well told and portrayed … 10/10 Best movie I've seen in a while." "Intense, stressful, and captivating from the title sequence all the way to its final scene."

Andrew Scott has gained fame as one of the best film actors today. He has rejected superstardom status for smaller, more demanding material. He was Moriarty in the BBC series Sherlock, the "hot priest" in Fleabag, and in a memorable four-minute turn, he played exhausted trench lieutenant Leslie in 1917. In Pressure, he plays Group Captain James Stagg, a meteorologist, who must deliver an accurate weather report for D-Day to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Brendan Fraser appeared in several comedic action adventure films in the nineties and 2000's, for example, George of the Jungle and The Mummy. Fraser's career slowed down after that. In 2018, Fraser revealed that a film industry executive groped him, and that, plus other negative life events, traumatized Fraser. In 2022, Fraser starred in The Whale, about a morbidly obese recluse who dies of congestive heart failure. Fraser received many accolades for this comeback, including a best actor Oscar, and his career entered what fans called a "Brenaissance."

Kerry Condon is Captain Kay Summersby, Eisenhower's driver and confidante. Chris Messina is Irving P. Krick, an American meteorologist whose methods conflict with Stagg's. Damian Lewis is General Bernard Law Montgomery, a thorn in Eisenhower's side.

The soundtrack, by Volker Bertelmann, is appropriately spiky and tense. Bertelmann says, "I was trying to capture the scientific approach of a meteorologist and also the boldness of him staying true to science and his experience." As Pressure depicts troop ships heading to Normandy's beaches, initially, the soundtrack is very quiet, quoting from Arvo Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel." Bertelmann is a fan of Part, calling Part's music "very religious … modern Bach." When the battle for the beach begins, the music becomes louder and more chaotic.

The film follows Stagg wrestling with mountains of data from ocean salinity to the behavior of the jet stream. Stagg must also wrestle with Krick, a charming but potentially disastrously incorrect colleague. Given how difficult it was, eighty years ago, to produce an accurate weather report for the English Channel before satellites, computers, and reliable, rapid mass communication, there's a chance that Stagg could be wrong. He risks personal humiliation, being hated and hounded by every person he meets, causing the deaths of the men on the ships, prolonging the war, and handing the advantage to the advancing Red Army.

Scott's acting is so good you wonder why other actors can't do whatever it is that he is doing that makes him so compelling. Scott is 5'8", and the real James Stagg was 6'4". I don't wish they had gotten a taller actor to play Stagg. I wish Andrew Scott were taller, or that the movie had made him look taller. I completely believe that Scott is "dour but canny" as Eisenhower assessed Stagg. Scott plays a man who is completely committed to charts, graphs, numbers, and long distance phone calls to weather stations to get yet more charts, graphs, and numbers. In a key scene, Stagg shares vital data with his nemesis Krick. The page they are both looking at is covered with series of numbers – that's all – no words, no images, just hundreds of numbers. Both actors are so good that the scene is tense and emotionally involving.

Pressure tells a very particular story about a circumstance none of us have experienced. There is, though, as with all great art, the universal within the particular. Stagg, like many of us, must navigate a difficult workplace environment and its toxic competitions. Krick's methods of predicting weather are completely different from Stagg's. Bernard Law Montgomery, a Brit, was Commander of the Allied Ground Forces. Montgomery, in Pressure, needles and opposes Eisenhower. Eisenhower is in grief over Exercise Tiger, which was meant to be a training exercise, but that resulted in the deaths of over seven hundred Americans. These historic personages are all absolutely human and most people could probably relate to the workplace tensions onscreen, even though we've never saved the world from disaster.

The real Krick received a Bachelor's degree in physics at U.C. Berkeley and worked in the stock market until the crash of 1929. He received a doctorate in meteorology from the California Institute of Technology, where he also became a professor. After the war, he marketed cloud seeding as a way to create rain.

Weather historian John D. Cox says of Krick, "He was a brilliant American salesman, and weather forecasting was his product line, although, like many a great salesman, his number one product was himself." Groundbreaking Weather Bureau meteorologist Francis Reichelderfer "detested" Krick, calling him a "smug, supremely self-confident self-promoter." Smithsonian magazine reports, "Krick … [falsely] claimed credit for the invasion forecast until his death … he wrote that if not for his team, 'all the mighty preparations for D-Day might have gone for naught, and the war in Europe might have gone on for years' … his Caltech colleagues prepared a report stating, 'He claims to do things that he can't do. He claims to have done things he didn't do.'"

Before the war, Krick worked for Hollywood. He predicted weather for the production of Gone with the Wind. Before D-Day, he predicted weather for Eisenhower in North Africa.

Chris Messina's Krick is, like the historical Krick, a handsome, charming, larger than life character who promotes inferior forecasting methods. Scott's Stagg locks horns with Messina's Krick. Krick is the hail-fellow-well-met guy who dominates attention in every room he enters. Stagg is the "dour Scot" who isn't charming anyone, but who has mastered up-to-date forecasting methods.

Krick uses the "analog" method. He has weather charts for the English Channel going back decades. He selects a chart with conditions he believes to be comparable to current conditions. If that date in the past was followed by fair weather, then that date in 1944 will be followed by fair weather.

In front of SHAEF, Stagg dresses down Krick, accusing Krick of cherry-picking data that supports the conclusion he thinks his superiors want. Stagg characterizes Krick's "analog" method as "horse s---." He says that exact conditions are never repeated or repeatable. Stagg points out that predicting weather for a film shot in the environs of Los Angeles, or for a battle fought in North Africa, both of which are deserts, is not the same as predicting weather for the English Channel, where weather can change dramatically by the hour. Stagg mentions the 1916 Battle of Mont Sorrel, fought during World War I. That battle also took place in early June. Krick's analog method would have predicted that that battle would have taken place during fair weather, but it didn't, and "chaos" resulted. In support of his analog method, Krick left out mention of Mont Sorrel – Krick cherry-picked, Stagg accuses. Stagg insists that D-Day cannot take place on June 5, the date Krick recommends. Stagg says that current conditions, as evidenced by data from weather stations, suggests that June 5 will be stormy. Stagg recommends a delay till June 18.

Eisenhower considers Stagg's methods, even though he has previously had good experiences with Krick. Montgomery, though, presses Eisenhower to believe Krick. Monty undercuts Eisenhower in front of SHAEF, reminding them that he, Monty, has had battlefield experience, whereas Eisenhower has not.

Yes, we know what date Eisenhower eventually selected. Pressure takes us on an inspirational, entertaining ride to that historical fact that we already know. Along the way, we discover material we knew nothing about before we entered the theater.

I loved Pressure, and – not but, but and – I wish it had been longer, and been brave enough to take a few risks.

Pressure shows its roots as a play. The film moves at a swift pace in a limited environment. Most action takes place in Southwick House. It is plot-focused. It doesn't stray far from the present action. That's great. But that swift pace and limited focus is inadequate to convey the richness and depth of the material.

I wish this movie had trusted audiences enough to discuss the meteorological data that Stagg relies on to form his prediction. Why, for example, does ocean salinity factor into it? At a key moment, data gathered by Maureen Flavin Sweeney, an Irishwoman at a remote site in Blacksod, causes the team to erupt. Why? The movie doesn't make this clear. There are online resources dedicated to Sweeney's D-Day contribution, but I wish the film had educated me.

I was moved by that scene where Stagg and Krick confer over a page of nothing but numbers. Stagg humbles himself and recruits Krick, a man he'd previously denounced. Stagg acknowledges Krick's "expertise." I wish the numbers on the page in Stagg's hand were less impenetrable. Weather forecasters today do include explanatory material in their forecasts; it wouldn't have been much of a stretch for Pressure to do a bit more of what people like American weathermen Al Roker have been doing for years on TV.

In Pressure, Andrew Scott's James Stagg is a fully rounded character. We get to see him struggling through inner turmoil while maintaining a stoic facade. We see him nearly break under pressure. We see him shed tears of joy at a celebratory moment. We can practically taste his commitment to "Data, data, data."

To my surprise, Kerry Condon's rich performance as Kay Summersby was also an emotional anchor in the film. Historians debate whether or not Summersby and Eisenhower were romantically involved. The film never takes a stand, but Condon's facial expressions answer the question in the affirmative, as does historian Richard Striner in his 2023 book, Ike in Love and War: How Dwight D. Eisenhower Sacrificed Himself to Keep the Peace. Summersby, though, strictly speaking, nothing more than Ike's chauffeur and secretary, does her best to keep everyone on task. She challenges those who need to be challenged; she comforts those who need to be comforted. She reassures, she puts things into perspective, she endures being "dismissed" when she tries too hard, but comes back later to try again. Pressure's Summersby is an appreciation of all the women who exercised their feminine gifts as nurturers and butt-kickers in their contribution to victory.

Americans younger than sixty might have no real idea of who Eisenhower and Montgomery were, or the nature of their relationship. In Pressure, to this viewer, they were too close to two-dimensional characters. Eisenhower is the noble leader. Monty is the stereotypical, supercilious British antagonist opposed to the Yankee hero. I wish Pressure had devoted flashback scenes, however brief, giving viewers a sense of the complicated depth of these two men's characters, and how their lives influenced their D-Day assessments and choices.

Montgomery's mother abused him so severely he refused to attend her funeral. He was a sadistic bully in school. He was so seriously injured in World War I that a grave was prepared for him. He returned to battle. He married late, and when his wife died of an insect bite, he never sought another bride. He didn't drink, smoke, or eat meat. He went to bed at 9:30. He defeated Rommel in North Africa. Some think he had Asperger's Syndrome. Churchill is quoted as saying that Monty was "Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance, insufferable in victory."

Tom Selleck played Eisenhower in the 2004 film Ike: Countdown to D-Day. In preparation for the role, Selleck said, he met Eisenhower's son.

"John said some things that I found inescapable in approaching Ike. Yes, he was charming. Yes, he had that grin. But he was tenacious, he was stubborn, he was a bulldog ... [John] said the most telling thing to me that I never forgot and he meant this with high praise for his dad, whom he truly loved and respected ... he said that it must have been hard for an actor to play someone who's so ordinary. And that's Ike. This Kansas farm boy, the son of pacifists who went from lieutenant colonel to four-star general in two years, became the most powerful man in history, and yet he was everyman. He was truly an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances. That's what I felt I had to communicate."

Selleck's quote, above, gets to the heart of the matter. The Nazis advertised themselves as the master race. The people who defeated the Nazis were "ordinary" "everymen" thrust into extraordinary circumstances who acquitted themselves magnificently.

I wish Pressure had done more to bring to fuller life Monty and Eisenhower, the film's secondary antagonists, after Stagg and Krick.

Surveys reveal abysmal historical ignorance among young Americans. I wish Pressure had begun with onscreen text citing pertinent statistics to give the viewer an idea of what the Nazis had been doing since 1933. Such text would briefly mention the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Gypsies, handicapped people, and other victims. It would have mentioned the Nazis' ultimate goals, including to murder every Jew in Europe and to decimate Poles and enslave a remnant, as described in Generalplan Ost. "Logan Likes Movies" is a YouTube movie review account. Reviewer Logan condemns Pressure because it is a "pro-military" movie that doesn't realize that killing is bad. Logan looks to be about twenty years old. Maybe if Pressure had devoted three minutes of onscreen text telling Logan why the Allies were fighting and dying, he would have given Pressure more than 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Finally, I wondered how someone who knows more about World War II than I do would react to Pressure. My friend Otto Gross is, like me, the son of a World War II combat veteran. Otto's father fought in North Africa and on the Eastern Front. He won two Iron Crosses. Yes, Otto's father was on the wrong side, something Otto addresses in his essay, "Ripples of Sin." Otto is a fan of The Longest Day, The Guns of Navarone, Greyhound, Band of Brothers, as well as The Dirty Dozen, which, he adds, is not a serious movie, but an entertaining one. Otto loved Pressure. In fact, I think I heard him sniffling as the final credits rolled.

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery