Hunt2546 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."

JasparLamarCrabb SPOILER ALERT! A so-so suspense yarn directed in the most restrained way, especially when you consider that the director is Richard Lester. Lester, usually the most imaginative film-maker, hands in what amounts to journeyman work. Richard Harris heads a large cast as a British navy man trying to defuse seven bombs planted on an ocean liner during a transatlantic trip. Harris cracks a lot of jokes and yells a lot at ship's captain Omar Sharif. It's all very tame and extremely well put together but nevertheless lacks punch. In addition to Harris & Sharif, the impressive cast includes Anthony Hopkins, David Hemmings, Ian Holm and Shirley Knight in the odd role of Sharif's shipboard mistress. Freddie Jones, Michael Hordern and Cyril Cusack appear briefly...one of them is a lunatic.

Robert J. Maxwell It's an enjoyable suspense flick about expertly assembled bombs secretly stashed away on a passenger liner carrying 1200 souls. The name of the extortionist is "Juggernaut." The ransom is half a million pounds, which the British government refuses to pay since it does not deal with terrorists.The captain is Omar Sheriff. The team of the naval bomb disposal unit, sent out by airplane and parachute, is led by Richard Harris. Well, it's a tough situation, boys and girls. The sea is Force 8. The captain's illicit lover and entirely irrelevant girl friend, Shirley Knight, asks, "Is that strong?" Sheriff replies, "Yes." (The scale only goes up to 9.) The rough seas, though, make attempts to dismantle the seven bombs more dangerous and they also prevent the launching of lifeboats which, in the captain's estimation, would result in the loss of half the passengers.There are some semi-comic interludes involving the passengers but the main plot is taken up with Harris's tinkering with one of the bombs, knowing that if he finds a way to disarm it, the others can be quickly rendered impotent.Now, that sounds pretty dull. One can imagine with horror one of the stereotypical bomb dismantling scenes, which ordinarily take five minutes, stretched out to an hour and a half. Two thousand repetitions of questions like, "Should we (gulp) cut the red wire or the blue wire?" Instead, it's pretty engrossing stuff. While Harris fiddles with the wires, Scotland Yard is trying to track down Juggernaut in London, and the two threads run parallel, kind of like the copper wires in the cord to a floor lamp, only unshielded. Anthony Hopkins is quietly superb as the Scotland Yard guy and Harris is boisterous and compelling at the other end of the channel. Freddy Jones' appearance is brief but memorable.Two more points. (1) You don't need to know much about bombs or serial circuits to follow the goings on and be swept up in the suspense, any more than you need to know how to play pool to follow "The Hustler." (2) The writers have done a fine job of individualizing the principal characters and they've given Harris some superior dialog. "If this doesn't work, I'm going to be shocked by my own mortality." And, "You've heard about the goldfish? One says to the other, 'There must be a God. Who changes the water?'" Overall, it's not a work of art in any sense, but an enjoyable thriller about bomb disposal at sea. Craftsmanship rather than poetry.

Poseidon-3 Released at the height of the disaster movie craze of the 1970's, this is more a suspense film than an all-star catastrophe epic. Sharif plays the stoic captain of an outdated cruise liner who is informed of seven bombs placed throughout the lower levels of the ship, which will explode in 24 hours unless a ransom is paid. While the police, the British government, the British navy and the management of the line scramble in London to find a solution and locate the extortionist, Harris (a demolitions expert) and his team are parachuted in to try to disarm the explosive devices. Meanwhile, seasick passengers battle fear and ennui as activities director Kinnear struggles to keep the mood cheerful. A truly staggering cast, made up of mostly British character actors, delivers interesting performances under the surprisingly taut and trim direction of Lester (who also infuses the film with his customary brand of subversive humor and perverse sense of the absurd.) Sharif has very little of note to do in his role other than act as a masthead and allow others to bounce off of him, but he looks nice in his Captain's gear. Harris has a very nice part and plays it well. Hemmings, as Harris' sidekick develops a likable persona. Hopkins effectively plays a police detective who has the added pressure of knowing his wife Mortimer and their two children are on board the threatened vessel! Holm is excellent as the harried manager of the cruise line. Knight has a dour, thankless role as a bored, restless, married passenger, but manages to inject some wryness into her line delivery. James scores a few points as a cut-the-bull passenger and Jones is a memorable blackmailing suspect. Cusack and Hordern appear without billing in small, but effective, roles. Visible briefly on deck is MacCorkindale as a helmsman. Lester placed the cast and extras upon a real life, down-on-its-luck cruise ship and sought out the worst possible weather, giving the film a sense of dreary verisimilitude that works in its favor. This is no slick Hollywood (or Irwin Allen-esquire) product but a cold, sometimes tense film with only some scattered humor to break the stress. Several sequences provide proper action and suspense, though the committed cast keeps everything pretty well grounded. Lester, who made quite a few comedic films is actually quite at home here, though the original author was unhappy enough with some of the changes Lester made to the script to have his name changed to an alias. He doesn't go for the sentimental (for example, there are no scenes of Hopkins and Mortimer crying on the phone together) nor does he dwell on the disaster elements. An explosion rocking a ballroom and setting off a sprinkler system is barely shown at all! He focuses instead on the mystery elements of the bomber and on the quest to disarm the bombs before the ship is destroyed. It's an unusual but mostly captivating piece of movie-making.