Very Cool!!!

Beautiful, moving film.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

"Juggernaut" was a well done thriller, but I have a special connection to the film, well, actually the ship used to film it. The fictional "Brittanic" was actually the German liner, Hamburg. The ship was nearly new when the first energy crisis hit and jacked fuel costs sky-high. The Germans were desperate to do anything for revenue, including renting their liner for a terror at sea film. Not much after, they sold the ship for cents on the dollar to the Russian Black Sea Line, which changed her name to Maxim Gorki. It was then I sailed on her on a cruise from New York to Bermuda. Fascinating experience, including KGB agents posing as "hosts". Their real job was to watch for crew defections. Years later, the Gorki was the site of a great power summit conference, but soon after that, she ran aground and was eventually scrapped. Just a bit of movie trivia. Now back to our reviews.

Richard Lester doing a disaster movie? Isn't he the guy who had the Beatles dancing in a field? Isn't he the guy who, almost at the same time as this flick, had Michael York, Richard Chamberlain and Oliver Reed camping it up as Musketeers? Who had Phil Silvers and Zero Mostel doing Beatles antics in ancient Rome? Spike Milligan's "Bed-Sitting Room" where distinguished actors like Ralph Richardson mutate into household furniture? Richard Lester's movies are usually lots of disjointed fun, whether it's Beatles or Musketeers. When DVD came out his "THREE/FOUR MUSKETEERS" was the first movie I bought. I always considered myself a David Lean sort of guy but Richard Lester movies were the ones I kept racking up and watching over and over.But why not a Richard Lester disaster flick? The Beatles movies "Hard Day's Night" and "Help"; "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"; "The Three/Four Musketeers" were all fun, which is what movies should be about. Right? And disaster movies are just silly adventure stories. Inexplicably popular in the '70s their numbers included the likes of (in various movies) grim-jawed Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster; Jack Lemmon and Jimmy Stewart; Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine; Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden and--Fred Astaire? Everyone who was anyone muscled his way onto a disaster movie (and sometimes anyone who was no one: Charro?) It was the Beatles field sequence in the air. It was the Talbot Munday/Stephen Spielberg adventure serial in less than two hours.In "Juggernaut" Lester is assisted by an A-1 cast including (but not limited to) Ian Holm, Freddie Jones, Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkinds, David Hemmings, Julian Glover, Roy Kinnear and, as the Captain, Omar Sharif (shades of David Lean!), title character in then then-box-office champ "Doctor Zhivago." Plot: someone has placed bombs on the "Love Boat." Never mind how, these details hardly matter in the best disaster movies. This movie takes place between shipboard and the police/government/shipowners. And shooting between them is famous (and living) bomb defuser Richard Harris.Problem: disaster movies' bread and butter is wondering who will live and who will die. Lester's style is distancing. Never mind. Focusing on command on the ship and the good guys ashore, Lester brings us many tense moments with Harris jammed in the middle, wondering whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire.Problem: Lester's style is dated. The most avaunt-garde directors, trying to break through the stolid movie-as-we-know-it, look the most dated today (cf. the different versions of "The Thomas Crowne Affair"). But it's because Lester eschews the mock-heroics typical of disaster movies and the oh-gee-who's-gonna-die question in the air that Lester's film stands up better than most disaster-fodder. His movie rises above the usual nonsense by being super-normal (Ian Holm with his lousy kids at home, for instance; or the realistic feeling with the police; or roy Kinnear's hopelessly jolly cruise-director).Barely noticed on its release, Lester's "Juggernaut" has, like the best disaster movies, stood the test of time (apart from those neckties and wide lapels, guys. Yes,it's the '70s. But we're spared too many cloying shots of children in danger; warning: there's a few).It's too bad Lester seems to have lost his nerve after Roy Kinnear's unfortunate death on the set of "Return of the Musketeers." Then again, Lester may simply have been so much a man of his time, the 90s til now had no home for him. But like his best movies (skip "Petunia") Lester's movies are timely-timeless fun.

Richard Lester's "Juggernaut" appears to finally getting the respect it deserves as a superbly human suspense film. Plot: seven bombs are placed aboard ocean liner. High seas prevent lifeboat evacuation. Royal Navy bomb disposal team is airdropped to defuse devilishly clever bombs or everybody goes down with the ship. So ignore the copy line "The Greatest Sea Adventure Ever filmed" (it's not even a "sea adventure," it's a "bomb disposal adventure" and hello, it may be "the greatest bomb disposal movie ever filmed.") Superb performances by the best actors in GB, with Lester's gift for finding human moments amid all the tension--lost kids, scared clowns, heroic Indian stewards, humane policemen, witty upper class faded beauties plus the requisite alpha studs dealing with a terrible situation, all of it original. Note also how the red-blue theme is woven throughout the production (first image: red, blue streamers entangled as ship departs and the film comes down to a RN bomb disposal expert's choice between life and death when he must decide to cut a red or blue wire.) Lester constricts his own famous "style," the free-wheeling, goofily improvisational aspects of his Beatles films, and keeps the plot tight, the suspense high, the human vignettes touching, and the look and feel of the film entirely fresh. Thanks to Kino-Lorber for rescuing this superb film from the memory hole; it belongs with a few other diamond-perfect thrillers like "Charlie Varrick" and "The Third Man."

Juggernaut is a well done action / disaster thriller which combines some good performances with great direction and scripting. An extortionist calling himself Juggernaut has planted several bombs aboard the ocean liner Britannic and is threatening to sink the liner in heavy seas if he is not paid off. The film follows an official from the cruise company, a naval bomb defuser, and London police officials as they attempt to prevent a catastrophe.What sets Juggernaut apart from a thousand other 'mad bomber' films is that to a large extent it approaches the threat from an official, even technical perspective. Rather than a maverick cop chasing the psychopath around the ship, we get highly suspenseful scenes of professionals trying to defuse bombs. The film plays up the difficulty of defusing a booby-trapped bomb, taking it beyond the film cliché of simply cutting the right wire. The heroes have to get through a variety of hidden snares within the devices before they even get to the wires. Indeed, the sub-plot involving the cruise official serves to remind us that this is not just a 'technical exercise,' that there really are lives at stake.Furthermore, the film does not succumb to the temptation to overplay its villain or make him a flamboyant maniac. Despite his code name serving as the title of the film, Juggernaut does not figure that prominently in the plot. When he does turn up, the performance is quite understated, particularly when compared to the head of the bomb squad. (Only Richard Harris would think that downing a bottle of scotch is good preparation for defusing a bomb.) Indeed, one can argue that the bombs themselves serve as the primary antagonist of the film with their fiendish designs.The acting in the film is quite good overall, even if the characters aren't always that well fleshed out. Richard Harris does a good job as the film's overall protagonist, lending him a sense of mordant humor that keeps him from becoming a stale action hero. Omar Sharif also does a good job as the ship's captain, even though his character is largely one note.Juggernaut does have some weak points. At times, the investigation back in London is given short shrift, so that it is difficult to follow. Furthermore, there are one or two scenes contrived for dramatic effect that take away from the film's realism. In particular, one scene where a young child gets access to a restricted area of the ship strains credibility. Still, the film definitely stands as a minor classic in its genre.