Juggernaut aka Terror On The Britannic (1974, Dir. Richard Lester)
Synopsis:
Refurbished ocean liner Britannic leaves Southampton, bound for New York, with 1400 passengers and crew. A terrorist, calling himself ‘Juggernaut’, contacts the shipping firm’s managing director (Ian Holm) to inform him that 7 bombs, placed aboard the ship, will explode the following morning if a ransom of £500,000 is not paid. A navy bomb disposal squad led by Fallon (Richard Harris) is dispatched to try and defuse the bombs; whilst the police, led by Anthony Hopkins, try to find the mysterious ‘Juggernaut’ before the time runs out.
I’ve been singing the praises of this film since I first saw it on TV as a teenager, one wet Sunday afternoon. My main reason for watching it had been because it starred one of my favorite actors: David Hemmings (Blow Up, Deep Red), but ultimately, the film gripped me so completely it rapidly became one of my favorite films. Unavailable to buy for many years, I initially made do with a well worn VHS taped off the tv, but in recent years MGM have produced a decent, albeit bare bones, widescreen DVD transfer.
It’s one of those films that once you’ve seen it a) you won’t forget and b) you’ll wonder why it isn’t better known or more revered. It has all the right credentials: all-star cast (as well as Hemmings, there’s Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, Freddie Jones and Roy Kinnear’s finest ever screen performance as the put-upon ship’s entertainer.), a well-known director in the form of Richard Lester (Hard Days Night, Three Musketeers, Superman 2 etc) and a sharp, tense script with additional dialogue by Alan Plater (“Boys From The Blackstuff”). Yet, even fans of Lester’s films, such as Steven Soderbergh (whose book of interviews with Lester, “Getting Away With It”, is highly recommended) don’t view it as one of his greatest films and at the time of its release it was unfairly dismissed as another seafaring disaster movie.
Let’s clear that up for starters: it’s not a disaster movie, it’s a thriller — a tense one- that has more in common with Wages Of Fear or Z than The Poseidon Adventure. Gerry Fisher’s brilliant and largely handheld camerawork has a semi-documentary feel, enhanced by often placing the lead actors deep amongst the extras and using long lenses or zooms to isolate them from the crowd.
There’s no bombastic or military-style music to enhance the nail-biting action, in fact there’s hardly any music used in the film. However, Ken Thorne’s minimal score is both effective and, especially at the very end, quite haunting. Instead, and in-keeping with the camerawork, the film relies heavily on natural sound to provide most of the sonic atmosphere: from messages over the ship’s tannoy and the incessant noise of the strong wind and breaking waves, to the steady pulse of the oscilloscope, Harris’ character uses to listen in to the bombs’ fusing mechanism.
It’s very masculine film. There are hardly any female characters and only one (played by Shirley Knight) whose character is explored in any depth. However, as with other male-dominated dramas, such as the aforementioned Wages Of Fear or John Carpenter’s The Thing, it’s hard to think of how the addition of more female characters would have helped the narrative. By keeping the main cast largely male, the dialogue is paired back to the minimum. There’s very little time for discussion or introspection and any form of sentiment is regarded with a typically male 70s -style derision. One critic compared the film to the work of Howard Hawks, but the characters on display here are far from “Hawksian”-style heroes. Harris’ character, in particular, is not afraid to acknowledge how terrified he is, despite all his sarcastic wit and bravado. His football terrace chant of “Fallon’s the champion”, every time he diffuses a bomb, is clearly a coping mechanism and, by the end of the film, a mantra that even he can no longer whole-heartedly believe in.
There are so many things to recommend this film: the acting is uniformly excellent and as well as the leads, there are wonderful supporting performances from the likes of Julian Glover, Cyril Cusaak, Michael Horden and Kenneth Colley. The editing, by long-time Nicholas Roeg collaborator Antony Gibbs, is superb — the cut from Anthony Hopkins’s policeman on a London rooftop, with the sound of an airplane flying overhead to the plane carrying Harris’ team to the ship being only one example of the films’ masterful collage of sound and vision. The many bits of great dialogue given to Ian Holm’s character (who’s arguably the film’s conscience): “Yes, I know: I must not question Government policy in loud voice!”; The pained expression on Hopkins’s face as he listens to his young son (who is onboard the Britannic) excitedly tell him over the telephone: “I nearly got blown up in my pyjamas, Daddy!”; The ransom delivery going awry because of the courier not counting on being charged for ‘excess baggage’ at the airport; Juggernaut’s (who worked for the British Government, before being given early retirement and a “miserable excuse for a pension”) total lack of repentance and his chilling line: “I’m still good at my job” and the final shot of Harris on the deck of the ship, his loner status confirmed by the fact that none of the many passengers around him seem to be aware of who he is and what he’s gone through to save all of their lives.
There are no happy endings here: every one has lost something or someone and none emerge unscathed from the experience; and it’s this fatalistic view of the world that ultimately sticks in your mind as the camera pulls back from the ship and the credits roll.
