| Worth seeing: | for Brendan Fraser's General Eisenhower, trying to decide which "boring" weatherman to believe before authorising D-Day |
| Director: | Anthony Maras |
| Featuring: | Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis, Kerry Condon, Alexander Hanson, Con O'Neill, Crispin Letts, Jojo Macari, Robert Portal, Tamsin Topolski, Toby Williams |
| Length: | 100 minutes |
| Certificate: | 12A |
| Country: | France, UK, US |
| Released: | 9th September 2026 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
It’s early June 1944 and General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) has set the 5th as the date for D-Day – the invasion which he hoped would give the Allies the edge over the Nazis.
His chief weatherman Irving Krick (Chris Messina) has given him the all-clear, but Churchill has sent along his chief meteorologist, Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott), to reassure the generals that a major storm will clear in time…
…Stagg shocks Krick and angers the top brass – including General Montgomery (Damian Lewis) – by claiming it won’t and advises Eisenhower to delay the operation.
With an Allied victory hinging on the weather – and the ability of scientists to predict it – everyone from the Generals and their squaddies to the meteorologists are coming under increasing pressure to get it right.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
With so many stories told about the Second World War, it’s refreshing when someone comes up with a new take on familiar ground. Putting what the film acknowledges are “boring” weather forecasters at the heart of a war film is certainly a breath of fresh air – as it were.
Frustratingly, for the viewer, Andrew Scott’s Stagg is a cantankerous blow-hard who just shouts down everyone who disagrees with him, while Chris Messina’s Krick is a charming joker, all of which makes it tough to root for the plucky Scot, as we know we’re meant to, but it does perhaps give an idea as to why the generals at the time might have been all the more tempted to side with Krick – over and above the fact that he had the message they wanted to hear.
Most of the action is confined to the weather-forecasting room and the briefing room at the Portsmouth mansion where Eisenhower and his British counterparts were running the D-Day operation, but the director clearly can’t resist breaking out to show us the D-Day landings themselves – but any modern film-maker who tries to match Steven Spielberg’s portrayal of the same events at the start of Saving Private Ryan is on a hiding to nothing.
Weather stations across the northern hemisphere are feeding air pressure readings back to HQ, where the pressure is growing – as one weatherman essentially accuses the other of being full of hot air. In truth, it’s astonishing to think that Krick could have got away with what he got away with for so long – unless the film-makers are exercising a bit of poetic licence.
While it’s essentially a stand-off between Stagg and Krick, the film comes to life more when the generals are on screen – Damian Lewis Monty is a lot of fun – although if he was really that irresponsible, it’s hard to imagine that he would have been so influential – and Brendan Fraser’s “Ike” is the high point – desperate, but realistic and honourable in equal measure.
In an effort not to blind us with science, the film pads a little, taking us outside the mansion to spend a bit of time with the squaddies, waiting for their marching orders, and there’s a bit of added tension when a bomb strikes the hospital where Stagg’s wife is due to give birth.
For a film that’s ostensibly trying to do something different, it reaches for a lot of familiar tropes.