Juggernaut (1974)

I experienced one of those incidences of synchronicity you sometimes get, in that this afternoon I sat down on the sofa, (having completed my combined exercise and shopping - I walked to the supermarket and back), and started flicking through the channels for something to watch with my cup of tea.  Within a couple of clicks I was pleasantly surprised to find, just starting on Film Four, a film which, for some reason, I'd been thinking about earlier in the week: Juggernaut (1974).  Quite why this film had come back into my head of late, I really don't know.  Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that cruise ships and liners have been in the news a bit of late, with most of them forced back to port by the coronavirus pandemic.  Or maybe my recurring dreams about being at sea, most specifically being on the bridge of a ship (although never a passenger liner) had something to do with it.  Who knows.  But whatever the cause of my sudden remembrance of the film - there it was on TV this afternoon.  Unlike many other films I've seen again after a gap of many years, Juggernaut didn't disappoint - if anything, this tale of an Atlantic liner being held to ransom with a bomb threat has improved with age.  It captures early seventies Britain, with its exhausted, cynical and run down feeling perfectly.  The cast list, moreover, is a veritable who's who of the British acting profession at the time, headed by Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins and David Hemmings, ably supported by the likes of Ian Holm, Julian Glover, Freddie Jones, Kenneth Colley, John Stride, Kenneth Cope, Roshan Seth and Roy Kinnear, amongst many others.  Oh, and Omar Sharif is the ship's super-smoothy captain.

I recall that there was a lot of publicity surrounding the film was it was made and released.  Quite apart from the all-star cast, it was inspired by a real incident a couple of years earlier, when a military bomb disposal team had been parachuted aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 in response to a bomb treat. (It turned out to be a hoax).  It was also a big budgeted British made film, something that was becoming increasingly rare, as the UK film industry began to crumble during the seventies.  Juggernaut was something of an unusual project for director Richard Lester, generally associated with somewhat lighter, often satirical, fare.  Indeed, he joined the production, quite literally, at the last minute, after two previous directors had left the film, having just completed The Three Musketeers in Spain.  Juggernaut is a far darker film than the Musketeers, or, indeed, any of Lester's previous projects.  It is actually, quite literally, darker - all muted winter colours and dimly lit ship interiors, in stark contrast to the bright, summery exteriors of The Three Musketeers.  The film is far darker in tome, too, with none of the dashing heroism and witty dialogue of his previous film - although Richard Harris' bomb disposal man brings a rich vein of very black humour to the film.  Another notable aspect of Juggernaut is that it was shot mainly on location - principally aboard a real liner chartered by the film company and sailed in circles around the North Sea, in the worst weather they could find, (it is a key plot point that the seas are too heavy for the captain to launch the life boats).  The run down liner, (in reality the TS Hamburg, which had just been sold to a Soviet shipping line and was to be renamed Maxim Gorky), which is still having renovations carried out, even as she sails, provides a suitably gloomy and miserable backdrop for much of the action.

There can be no doubt that the fictional Britannic (as the ship is called in the narrative) must be the least glamourous ocean liner ever depicted on film.  The movie perfectly captures the misery of a winter Atlantic crossing - all heavy seas, gale force winds and torrentisl rain - made worse by the fact that the ship's supposedly new stabilisers are failing.  Roy Kinnear gives a notable performance as the ship's entertainment officer, desperately trying to distract  nauseous passengers from, first, heavy seas, then later a bomb threat - trying to carry on as normal with tennis tournaments in howling gales and fancy dress contests even as Harris and his men are trying to defuse the bombs.  Interestingly, Juggernaut wasn't a big hit on its release.  Richard Lester always thought that the fault lay with the marketing, which tried to sell it as a disaster movie, (movies of this genre, like Earthquake, Towering Inferno and Poseidon Adventure had all been big hits during this period), when it really wasn't, (spoiler: the ship doesn't sink).  But this hints at the film's real problem: that it doesn't really fit into any clear cut genre.  Sure, it does has some elements of the disaster movie, with a large number of people in a confined setting under threat, but it keeps cutting away from the action on the ship for a police procedural in London, as cops Anthony Hopkins and Kenneth Colley try to track down the bomber.  There are also political interludes, as Ian Holm's shipping company executive clashes with John Stride's government representative over whether or not to pay the ransom.  Then there are the various sub-plots unfolding aboard the ship, ranging from the captain's affair with a lady passenger to rivalries between his officers.  The result of this fractured, patchwork storytelling is to take much of the tension and sense of urgency from the film.  It also makes it difficult for the audience to really get know and empathise with any individual characters.

Seen at this distance in time, however, Juggernaut is still a highly enjoyable slice of the seventies.  Lester's direction moves it along surprisingly smoothly, despite the constant shifts in narrative and the gloomy photography is excellent: the shots of the liner plying its way through heavy seas are particularly evocative, its stoic progress despite its obviously run down condition seemingly presenting the audience with an analogy for seventies Britain.  The whole bomb disposal aspect, as Harris and Hemmings attempt to work out how the explosive devices work so as to disarm them are both intriguing and tense.  The performances are generally excellent, with Holm's cynical shipping executive finding reserves of compassion and Sharif's philandering captain showing his mettle, providing an oasis of calm in the face of adversity are especially memorable, although Harris' mordant and hard drinking bomb disposal man is undoubtedly the star turn.  Special mention should also be made of Freddie Jones who, of course, turns out to be the extortionist behind the bombs, giving a subtly deranged performance.  While Juggernaut might not have been a hit in 1974, nearly fifty years later it can be seen as a hugely entertaining and professional piece of film making.