I Watch Films: Juggernaut

Juggernaut

The ocean liner Britannic is on its way from Southampton to New York. The ship has just been refitted, and parts are still being put back together. The captain’s played by Omar Sharif, and his lover is aboard. The Passenger Entertainment Manager is played by Roy Kinnear and his efforts to make things jolly and fun are going to be tested to the limit. There’s a handful of other British 1970s character actors aboard, and a variety of minor storylines, but the film’s not actually going to engage with this.

The managing director (on land) gets a call, claiming there are bombs aboard and one goes off in a non-vital spot. There are seven others and they’re told not to interfere with them, and to pay a ransom. There’s a lot of action on land; the police trying to track down everyone who is on their explosives experts lists, the government giving unhelpful advice, the shipping company trying to decide what to do. There’s a radio-call clash between the captain and director.

The weather is bad*, so abandoning ship is risky. Also risky is the job of a naval bomb disposal team, whose leader is played by Richard Harris, and are discovered defusing a bomb** somewhere in London. They’re dispatched to parachute to the Britannic, a risky operation in which they lose one of the team***.

The drama above decks becomes secondary to the bomb disposal operation, and despite their best efforts so does the onshore investigation. Or so it seems until the reveal, setting up a neat and fun conclusion, which doesn’t quite jibe with this giant ship in rough seas/tense narrow corridor filled with pipes bomb work.

Watch This: A cool 70s bomb disposal thriller with lots of famous actors
Don’t Watch This: It has half a dozen interesting stories that it does a good job of one, and kind of waves at the others

* It’s a bit rough, and according to the Wikipedia page the extras were warned that the ship would be heading for the worst weather they could find in the North Sea; still it’s not a huge mid-Atlantic storm, and probably just as well or filming would have been difficult.

** I don’t recall if we’re told who or what the bomb is about.

*** The film was inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 that had the SAS and SBS parachute into the sea to go aboard and help the search.