Juggernaut **** (1974, Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins Shirley Knight, Ian Holm, Roy Kinnear, Freddie Jones, Clifton James) – Classic Movie Review 9929

Director Richard Lester’s ultra-tense, impressively efficient, and thoroughly enjoyable 1974 Seventies action adventure Juggernaut stars Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins Shirley Knight, Ian Holm, Roy Kinnear, Freddie Jones, and Clifton James.

Sharif stars as Captain Alex Brunel, whose luxury transatlantic liner, the ship ‘Britannia’, is held to ransom with seven large barrel bombs placed on it. Information on their defusing will be given in return for the money. Harris and Hemmings also star as bomb experts Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon and Charlie Braddock, who parachute in to try to save the day.

Among the big cast of actors in peril are Shirley Knight as Sharif’s love interest Barbara Bannister and Lester regular comedy relief Roy Kinnear as the ship’s social director Curtain, while Ian Holm and Hopkins play shipping boss Nicholas Porter and police detective Superintendent John McLeod, who worry about things back home where the police race against time to try to track down the bomb maker, who calls himself ‘Juggernaut’.

Comedy director Lester settles down to turning in an immaculately crafted, white-knuckle disaster movie, with the good actors enlivening the clichés that are the staple of the genre. Juggernaut is rousing comic-book escapism, with the director squeezing the maximum amount of suspense and entertainment value from the production-line plot.

Also in the cast are Caroline Mortimer, Mark Burns, John Stride, Julian Glover, Jack Weston, Roshan Seth, Kenneth Colley, Andy Bradford [Andrew Bradford], Paul Antrim, Ben Aris, John Bindon, Adam Bridge, Rebecca Bridge, Tom Chadbon, Kenneth Cope, Michael Egan, Freddie Fletcher, Simon MacCorkindale, John Pennington, Bob Sessions, Cyril Cusack, Michael Hordern and Norman Warwick.

Juggernaut is directed by Richard Lester, runs 109 minutes, is made by David V Picker Productions and Two Roads Productions, is released by United Artists, is written by Richard Alan Simmons [Richard De Koker] and Alan Plater (additional dialogue), is shot in DeLuxe Color by Gerry Fisher, is produced by Richard Alan Simmons [Richard De Koker] and David V Picker executive producer, is scored by Ken Thorne and is designed by Terence Marsh.

Lester inherited the film from two previous directors, but his shooting schedule was reduced by two weeks and still brought it in on time. He said it was scheduled for ten weeks and completed in six.

Lester completely rewrote the script with writer Alan Plater, and the writer/producer, Richard Alan Simmons, was so unhappy with the result that he had himself credited as Richard De Koker. It was inspired by an incident in May 1972 when Royal Marines from the Special Boat Service were parachuted aboard the QE2 after a bomb hoax.

The film was shot mainly on location in the North Sea aboard the real German cruise ship T S Hamburg (doubling as the ship ‘SS Britannic’), which had recently been sold to the Soviet Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed the TS Maxim Gorkiy. The British production company chartered the ship before the Soviets began operating the ship with paying passengers.

It is shot at Twickenham Film Studios, St Margarets, Twickenham, Middlesex, England; at the water tank at Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England; and on the TS Maxim Gorkiy, Atlantic Ocean.

Lester recalled: ‘I think that energy of getting it right carried it through. It was a wonderful experience, great fun.’

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9929

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