And I'm surprised not to see it mentioned here.
I figure that anyone going to see it knows what it’s about: The weather forecasting which was so crucial on the eve of D-Day, as Eisenhower was about to launch the American military across the English Channel in WWII.
The hero is a prim Scot named Stagg, recommended to Eisenhower by Churchill, who declared him the best meteorologist in England. Stagg is the doughty loner among all the Americans in the group, and particularly butts up against Eisenhower’s own trusted cocky meteorologist, who blithely predicts perfect weather, no matter how strongly Stagg contradicts this with his rock-firm conviction of potentially lethal storms. Even if you don’t know history, all cinematic convention dictates that Stagg will be proved right, so there’s that pleasant wait for the shoe of vindication to drop.
The cast was almost completely unfamiliar to me, with the exception of a beefy Brendan Fraser as Ike. But it looks to be a real labor of love with Anthony Maras as director, co-screenwriter, and editor.
It’s a curious movie, because you could undoubtedly make an interesting free 50-minute documentary on it for television, but it takes nerve to think you can pull off a feature film, and get people to come and pay for it. (Of course, if it had been made 20-70 years ago, you could get WWII vets to go.) It works well, though. It’s a nice production, and manages to convey the tension and high stakes, even in the absence of car chases or explosions.
(Trivia, via IMDB: In a remarkable coincidence, one of the assistant editors hired to go through that archival footage turned out to be James Stagg - the grandson of the real Dr. James Stagg whose story the film tells - a fact that was not known when the hiring decision was made.)