Juggernaut

Exciting water-bound thriller about a crazy man who has planted explosives aboard a cruise ship and now in high sea with 1200 passengers . This big-budgeted disaster movie was professional and expertly directed by Richard Lester . It deals with a blackmailer who demands a huge ransom in exchange for information on how to disarm the seven bombs he placed aboard the transatlantic liner Britannic captained by Captain Alex Brunel (Omar Sharif) who while falls for a passenger (Shirley Knight) . As a nutty person plants explosives aboard a cruise ship and he mocks the crew about his plan over the wireless . He is asking for a £500,000 ransom , otherwise the bombs aboard will explode . An expert artificier Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) is assigned to defuse them in the teeth of a howling gale , being helped by a competent as well as resourceful team (David Hemmings , Jack Watson , among others) . The countdown surges , while the explosive experts struggle to find the bombs . Meantime , back in England Supt. John McLeod (Anthony Hopkins) and other officers whose families are aboard races desperately to track down Juggernaut , the mad bomber . The greatest sea adventure in history has just begun !.

Nail-biting film that contains intrigue , unsettling scenes , thrills , emotion and it raises a fair amount of tension on its theme of seven bombs planted aboard ; resulting out to be pretty entertaining . This formula suspense movie belongs to catastrophe genre of the 70s , being the undisputed king , ¨The towering inferno¨ along with ¨Earthquake¨ , ¨Roller coaster¨ , ¨Two-Minute Warning¨ and many others ; this formula disaster movie was widely developed by Irwin Allen , previously winner of numerous Oscars for ¨Poseidon¨ until the failures as ¨Beyond Poseidon¨, ¨Swarm¨ and ¨When the time ran out¨ . Well-done drama that turns out to be an intriguing and suspenseful film . The tension is nice if not super-tense , though there are some boring sup-plots that undermine the action . As a sub-story involving an American called Corrigan/Clifton James is so negligible as to be simply not worthwhile . The film took its inspiration from an incident which occurred in 1972 when a man claimed he had planted a bomb on board the QE2 and demanded a ransom . The movie was shot mainly aboard a real ocean liner , the Hamburg had recently been sold by its German owners to the Soviet Unión . As the production company -David V. Picker and Denis O'Dell as associate producer- soliciting extras who would take a lengthy cruise in the North Sea for free , but with the knowledge that the ship would actually seek out the worst possible weather . Main cast , -Richard Harris , Omar Sharif and Anthony Hopkins- give excellent interpretations . With special mention for Richard Harris who steals the show as the skillful Lt. Cmdr. Fallon , the brave leader who leads his expert team of men appointed to a risked assignment . Support cast is frankly awesome , all of them give memorable supporting portrayals , it is formed by an all-British-secondary-star-cast , such as : Freddie Jones , Ian Holm , Julian Glover , Cyril Cusack , Mark Burns , Jack Watson , Roshan Seth , Kenneth Colley and Roy Kinnear as the ship's comical social director . And it appears uncredited : Cyril Cusack , Gareth Thomas , Michael Hordern and Simon MacCorkindale .

It displays a colorful and gripping cinematography in Panavision by Gerry Fisher , including persistent high-angle shots photographing the cruise ship , nice camera-work and use of close-ups on bombs . Intriguing and atmospheric score by Ken Thorne . Suspenseful and fine direction by a magnificent professional , Richard Lester . The project was originally to be directed by Bryan Forbes . After his departure , Don Taylor was hired , but departed four weeks before shooting was to begin . Richard Lester then came on board . Rating : Good and entertaining , it's a fairly watchable disaster movie .

**This comment may contain spoilers**

I've just had the pleasant experience of rewatching Juggernaut which I haven't seen since I was a kid back in 1975. What a terrific film! The story concerns a luxury cruiser - the HMS Brittanic - caught in a storm at sea when a terrorist, the 'Juggernaut' of the title, announces that he has planted seven bombs on board and demands a ransom in exchange for the passengers lives (the passengers can't take to the lifeboats because of the storm). So it's up to bomb disposal expert Fallon (Richard Harris) and his team to get on-board the ship by parachuting into the sea with their equipment from an RAF plane. But when negotiations between the terrorist and the police collapse Fallon and his men find themselves in a desperate race against time.

Sounds promising, huh? And the cast is amazing. In addition to Harris you've got David Hemmings as Fallon's sidekick, Anthony Hopkins as the policeman whose wife and kids are trapped on-board the stricken liner, Roy Kinnear (in a scene stealing performance) as the ships hapless entertainments officer and Omar Sharif as the ships captain. There's lots of great British character actors too including Freddie Jones (Firefox), Julian Glover (For Your Eyes Only), Ken Collee (The Empire Strikes Back, Ripping Yarns) and Ken Cope (who played the ghost in Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased).

The production values are equally impressive. The actors are actually on-board a real ocean liner in what looks like fairly rough weather. In some of the deck scenes you can actually see them sliding back and forth across the deck against rolling, grey, choppy seas. There isn't one faked up shot of actors in front of a back projection setup that I could spot and the realism adds a palpable 'you are there' sense of authenticity.

Juggernaut was directed by Richard Lester who demonstrates real talent for making the personal lives of those trapped on the ship as watchable as the suspense sequences. The crew and cast of the Brittanic aren't the laughable cardboard cut-outs of an Irwin Allen epic like The Poseidon Adventure but recognisable individuals with problems sharply observed by Lester with dry, British understatement. Chief amongst them is pretty American actress Shirley Knight who starts off as the Captain's mistress but wins our sympathy by discovering she has more in common with Kinnear's sensitive loser than Sharif's handsome but heartless Captain.

The unique setting of an ocean liner is also very well exploited, especially in one edge-of-your-seat sequence where a kid and a steward end up trapped between sealed bulkheads with a bomb about to explode. The dialogue (credited in part to Alan Plater) is consistently sharp and makes some pointed political digs. When the head of the company (Ian Holm) which owns Brittanic offers to pay Juggernaut's ransom a creepy Govenment rep advises him against it because of the subsidies HMG is paying to the company. When several people get killed even Holm's businessman can't stomach the callousness of risking several hundred lives for the sake of a Government investment, 'Tell him to go stuff his subsidies!' he yells at the adviser in one of many audience-pleasing moments.

Juggernaut is a work of rock solid professionalism and boasts a nail-biting climax. It's a reminder of what suspense thrillers used to be like before the Die Hard's and their successors twisted the format almost beyond recognition. I enjoyed Juggernaut a lot and I think you will too.

This movie has long been one of my most viewed videos for the following reasons. It has the considerable talents of the late Mr Roy Kinnear absolutely larking about on the high seas as the entertainment officer, which as anybody knows who has been in the business, is performed with perfect abplom. He cannot be faulted in a role just made for his considerable skills. Tony Hopkins as always underplays his role just to the point where you would want to kick him in the pants and get a move on. But this is just another great performance in a super movie where dramatic build up is mounted on each act of terrorism to a state where you dont know what action is about to explode from the drums within. Freddie Jones as the Hijacker and Omar as the captain also excel. The great Richard Harris has his ears and hands absolutely full with the horrific possibilities of being blowing sky high by the explosives placed on the ship, watch it and see what I mean. Overall a great "Disaster" movie of the genre. Only criticism would be the lack of music score which I think would have added in places a nearly always dramatic effect, but still warrants an eight point five out of ten.

It is New Years' Eve and six bombs are found on-board passenger cruiser BRITTANIC, below and above sea level. The anonymous perpetrator demands 500,000 pounds (a suspiciously low sum even in 1974.) Facing choppy seas and 'force 8 winds,' the crew are unable to unload passengers into life-rafts or rescue vessels, and so a team of bomb-disposal experts are flown in.

JUGGERNAUT is a well-paced film and can boast an all-star cast. Richard Harris plays the chief expert as a world-weary drinker who been in the job too long and faced imminent death so many times that he has lost all pretence for morality. David Hemmings has a smaller role as his assistant. A younger - but still grey haired - Anthony Hopkins heads the landside manhunt for the bomber. Ian Holm puts in a lovely performance as the compassionate head of the shipping company, who insists upon paying the ransom, even as the hard-on-terrorists British government threatens to withdraw its generous tax subsidies. Michael Hordern has a cameo, as too does Julian Glover. Rounding off the cast is an understated Roy Kinnear who plays the bumbling cruise director, offering hapless pleasantries to the passengers as well as falling short of a comfort after the bombs presence on board are revealed.

This is a very British film - these is little swearing, no resolute American hero, sandwiches are the meal of choice -offered to the bomb experts and the passengers - who are told relatively early of the threat - take the news with surprising grace, the British upper-lip prevailing over the typical Hollywood hysterier or sentimentality

This is one of those films that I was crazy about as a kid, and pleasantly surprised by years later. There are solid performances from an impressive cast including Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Anthony Hopkins. The camera work is excellent as well, with some creative macro shots that help clarify the technical details and keep the tension high. Though it requires some patience and attention on the part of the viewer, this film is full of subtle details and is well worth the effort.