Taken at face value, this is a gripping thriller about the D-Day landings in World War Two. Andrew Scott plays James Stagg, a metereologist appointed to give Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) the weather report for the day.
If it was just these two, in a box, reciting the script at each other, I would love it. It would be a brilliant film. But add to that Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Tamsin Topolski, Damian Lewis, Con O’Neill and the rest of the ensemble cast and you have a film that grows and breathes and shifts and morphs as it drags you in. This is a restless narrative; you think it’s one thing and then, boom, it’s not. It’s a wartime thriller, it’s about rationality versus irrationality, it’s about love, it’s about hope.
Most of all, in these New Dark Ages where the witless lead and they appoint their jesters to rubber stamp their twattery, it’s a film about science. It’s about the tedious, slow process of gathering data. It’s about not half-arsing something and, y’know, just repeating whatever some bloke on YouTube was spewing.
The film also contains a warning that means more now than when it’s set. At one point, Stagg says:
How can the weather be boring? It feeds us. The weather can destroy us. It controls our daily life. I don’t think that’s boring.
As Scott said these words, I felt a shiver in my bones. Look around the world in August 2026. Look at the wildfires, the floods, the coming Godzilla El Niño and possible collapse of the AMOC.
This film has soo many layers, so many themes and yet it is neither scattershot nor hard to follow. The central premise is so simple and yet so important, it serves as clear anchor for every other theme.
This could very easily be my top film of 2026.
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