Blu-ray: Juggernaut

That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the producers fired two directors (Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor) in succession before hiring Richard Lester in desperation. His quest to salvage Juggernaut in a just a few weeks mirrors events in the film, its protagonists attempting to defuse a set of bombs planted in the bowels of a transatlantic liner.

Lester’s masterstroke was to call in Alan Plater to help him rewrite the original script, the end result as much a political thriller as a disaster movie, following in the wake of The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake.

A former German cruise ship was chartered and 250 unpaid extras were recruited with the promise of a free holiday, albeit one where the production staff sought out the worst and stormiest Atlantic conditions to match the screenplay’s demands. Given 10 weeks to wrap, Lester finished shooting in just six, the resulting film a taut, engaging gem. Good casting helps, Omar Sharif playing the besieged captain while Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins lead the rescue attempt as a Royal Navy bomb expert and Scotland Yard superintendent respectively, the latter’s wife and children among the passengers.

Both are almost upstaged by Lester regular Roy Kinnear as the ship’s indefatigable social director Mr Curtain, and a young Ian Holm looks suitably browbeaten as the shipping line’s managing director. He wants to pay the ransom but is told by a pompous government official not to negotiate. Lester and Plater’s increasingly grubby liner, the aptly named SS Britannic, symbolises the UK in the early 1970s, a lumbering craft which spends a significant part of the film deliberately sailing round in circles, getting nowhere. “Does anything work in this bloody country anymore?” rails one character in an early scene.

Fortunately, Harris’s Anthony Fallon and Hopkins’ John McLeod are on the case, Fallon and his team parachuting in while McLeod leads the chase to capture the bomber. Lester neatly intercuts between the two plot strands, the ice-cool Fallon sequestered below deck while McLeod tears around a shabby-looking London in pursuit of the mysterious Juggernaut. Kinnear’s Curtain vainly attempts to maintain passenger morale while things go from bad to worse, the unexpected death of Fallon’s second-in-command Braddock (David Hemmings) a notable blow.

Laura Mayne’s booklet essay mentions an actual bomb-disposal expert giving Juggernaut 9/10 for accuracy, and it’s refreshing to see a thriller celebrating the role of experts rather than mavericks. That Harris and his crew will win out is never in any question, though the brilliantly edited final minutes are unbearably tense. Eureka’s production values are impressive, Mayne’s essay accompanied by Notes on Juggernaut by critic Richard Coombs. Disc extras include an audio commentary from Melanie Williams and James Leggott, plus insightful interviews with film historians Neil Sinyard and Sheldon Hall.

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