Juggernaut
The pride of the Sovereign Line, the SS Britannic launches to great fanfare, streamers and a brass band and well-wishers and relatives bidding bon voyage to their family members heading across the stormy North Atlantic; saying goodbye to his wife and two children from the dock is Police Superintendent John McLeod, unaware that within hours the course of the cruise ship will be consuming his every thought.
The vessel on open water under Captain Alex Brunel, a telephone call from an individual who calls themself Juggernaut to Nicholas Porter, owner of the Britannic, tells him there are seven explosive devices on board which will detonate at dawn the next morning, with any attempt to remove them causing them to blow immediately; the government advising not to pay the £500,000 ransom, bomb disposal expert Anthony Fallon and his team are flown to the rendezvous to parachute down…
A thriller balanced on the cusp of becoming a disaster movie, six of the devices below the waterline of the Britannic which carries around 1,200 souls, Juggernaut was captained by Richard Lester, a director whose diverse resume includes A Hard Day’s Night, The Three Musketeers and Superman II, joining the project late in pre-production and swiftly engaging The Beiderbecke Affair’s Alan Plater to substantially rework Richard Alan Simmons’ script, the result being sharp dialogue and an ensemble of characters who convey humanity and humour amid the fear.
Shot on an actual cruise ship in the process of changing hands between two operators, the filming schedule was non-negotiable and the weather on the open sea was suitably wild, adding veracity to an already tight script performed by a roster of top talent of the time, Omar Sharif, Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins and Ian Holm as Brunel, Fallon, McLeod and Porter with David Hemmings and Roy Kinnear as other members of the bomb squad and crew, and a host of other familiar faces making the most of their supporting roles.
Technically flawless and utterly immersive, balancing tension between the crew performing “business as usual” bravado on the upper decks and the fraught nerves below against the parallel processes of the attempts to defuse the bombs and the investigation onshore into who planted them, the only place Juggernaut fails is in not knowing what to do with the few women on board, Susan McLeod (Caroline Mortimer) too confused to take care of her children and Barbara Bannister (Shirley Knight) little more than a swifty discarded sounding board for the captain’s troubled conscience.
Originally released in 1974 and also sometimes known as Terror on the Britannic, Juggernaut is now making its UK Blu-ray debut courtesy of Eureka with a new edition supported by a new commentary from film experts Melanie Williams and James Leggott, an interview with film historian and Lester specialist Neil Sinyard and an interview with film historian Sheldon Hall considering the legacy of the disaster movie.
Juggernaut is available on Blu-ray from Eureka now
