See Brendan Fraser, Andrew Scott under 'Pressure' – Exclusive look

You’ve probably seen a World War II movie before. You probably haven’t seen one about the weather.

Directed by Anthony Maras (“Hotel Mumbai”), the real-life historical thriller “Pressure” (in theaters May 29), starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser, follows the intense days before D-Day. With potentially disastrous storms brewing around the English Channel, Allied forces have to decide whether to proceed with the invasion of Normandy on the planned date – Monday, June 5, 1944 – or postpone and risk losing the war. (Ultimately, they landed on the morning of June 6 during a break in the bad weather.)

"Nature doesn't care about our feelings or what we’re really going to get up to," Fraser says. "In our human arrogance, we can think it's the other way around, but we will be wrong."

The film, an adaptation of David Haig’s 2014 play, features Scott as Capt. James Stagg, a prickly Scottish meteorologist who has to deliver his important weather report to an intimidating group of military leaders, including Allied commander Dwight D. Eisenhower (Fraser).

It’s a movie that’s huge in scope, knowing D-Day’s significance to world history, but also intimate in its character study. And one that some might find an “unusual premise,” Scott allows. “The weather is something that literally dictates every single human being’s day, every single day. And it's something that is so embedded in our consciousness that we almost sort of discard it: Do I need an umbrella? Do I need a coat? Am I going to be cold? It's so omnipresent in our lives that of course it's going to influence some of the greatest things that ever happened in the world.

“In order for D-Day to be successful, you just absolutely need the right weather conditions, and that's just not something that you would necessarily even begin to think about,” Scott says. “That's to me the thing that was sort of so extraordinary about how a famous date that we know almost never took place in the way that it did because of this man's expertise.”

Maras acknowledges that the true history made it “a hard one” to crack as a thriller. “How do you sort of take a slow-moving, amorphous weather system that's happening in a different country and make it tense?”

In the movie, Stagg is sent to Allied headquarters at England's Southwick House to work with other meteorologists, including his American counterpart Irving Krick (Chris Messina). Immediately, Stagg clashes with Krick over forecasting methodology – Krick predicts clear skies for an ideal invasion morning, but Stagg differs strongly. And Stagg has to navigate his way through a hurricane of strong personalities, including British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis) and Eisenhower’s top aide Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon). 

“I love those kind of characters who are good people but not necessarily nice people,” Scott says of Stagg. “He's not particularly affable at the beginning of the movie. I didn't want to shy away from that. It wouldn't have made sense as a story if he was charming everybody from the outset.

"He actually doesn't really care if any of them like him. He just wants people to listen to his expertise and also to have a degree of humility about nature."

Stagg’s stress is compounded because his wife is pregnant, and the violence of war is starting to hit very close to home. Scott's role represents the voice of "many of the unsung heroes of that day," Fraser says, but every character feels the pressures of the moment. Eisenhower, for example, worries about the safety of his troops in Normandy after Operation Tiger, a rehearsal for D-Day that turned into a tragic debacle that cost men’s lives. In one key scene, he tells Summersby, “Every time I close my eyes, I see failure.”

“Eisenhower listened to everyone but had the onus of being the supreme commander,” Fraser says. “He was the one to make the final decision, and that was no small feat. It took a leap of faith and an intuition and trusting in an area that you had no expertise in necessarily, but really had to rely on those he trusted to give the best information. And there may have been too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.”

Fraser, who read Eisenhower biographies and "listened to podcasts until my ears hurt," thinks moviegoers will find “Pressure” enlightening, whether they come for the war or the weather.

“These were things I did not know about,” the Oscar winner says. “I'm hopeful that audiences come away from this with the deeper appreciation for what that kind of leadership looked like then, and that they would be reminded of why that war was fought at all. And compare that to not only our current day but to the future, too.”

War is very much at its heart, Maras adds, but “Pressure” is “also a more universal story in some ways about how do we face the biggest decision of our lives.”