Juggernaut (1974 film)



Juggernaut is a 1974 British crime suspense film starring Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, and Anthony Hopkins. The film, which was directed by Richard Lester, was largely shot on location aboard the TS Hamburg in the North Sea. It was inspired by real events aboard QE2 in May 1972 when Royal Marines from the Special Boat Service were parachuted on to the ship because of a bomb hoax.

In the film, Richard Harris leads a team of Naval bomb disposal experts sent to disarm several large barrel bombs that have been placed aboard an ocean liner crossing the North Atlantic. Meanwhile, ashore, the police race against time to track down the mysterious bomb maker, who calls himself "Juggernaut," who will for a ransom reveal the information that will disarm the bombs.

Plot
The ocean liner SS Britannic is in the middle of a voyage in the North Atlantic with 1200 passengers on board when the shipping line's owner Nicholas Porter (Ian Holm) in London receives a telephone call from an unidentified person with an Irish accent styling himself as "Juggernaut", who claims to have placed seven drums of high explosives aboard the ship which are timed to explode and sink it at dawn on the following day. He warns that the drums are booby-trapped in various ways and that any attempt to move them will result in detonation, and offers that technical instructions in how to render the bombs safe will be given in exchange for a ransom of £500,000. As an indication of his seriousness he then sets off a demonstration attack with a series of small bombs on the ship 's bridge, which injure one crewman. Unable to order an evacuation of the ship's passengers via lifeboats due to rough seas, the shipping line's management is inclined to yield to the ransom demand, however British government officials inform the company that if it does so they will withdraw the company's operating subsidy in line with the Government's policy of non-appeasement of terrorism.

Instead, a Royal Navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris), leading a bomb-disposal unit, is dispatched, arriving on the scene by air transit and parachuting into the sea, to board the ship and defuse the barrel-bombs before the deadline. Meanwhile back in London, Supt. McCleod (Anthony Hopkins), whose wife and two children happen to be holidaying on board the ship, leads Scotland Yard's investigation against the clock to capture the criminal master-bomber.

After an attempt to drill a hole into one of the barrel-bombs fails, setting it off and damaging the ship, Fallon decides to split up his team with each man working simultaneously on each of the remaining devices at different points around the ship, Fallon going first with each stage of the defusing operation and informing his men of each move by radio link, with the aim that if he fails and his bomb explodes, his men will know what went wrong and continue the process onwards, with his second in command taking up the lead, until the devices are disarmed. However, if two more bombs go off, the ship will sink. Fallon proceeds to disarm the bomb he is working on, apparently successfully, with his men following each step. However, it contains a hidden secondary mechanism and one of his men, close friend Charlie Braddock (David Hemmings), accidentally triggers it, resulting in his death when it explodes, causing further damage to the ship. A distraught Fallon abandons the operation and tells the ship's captain, Alex Brunel (Omar Sharif), to advise the shipping line to pay the ransom to avoid any more carnage. However when negotiations with Juggernaut break down (in part because Juggernaut sees the trap police set for him when he goes to collect the ransom) Fallon is ordered by the captain to continue disarming the remaining bombs.

Meanwhile, an extensive police search back in London captures the bomber posing as Juggernaut, who is revealed to be an embittered former British military bomb-disposal officer, Sidney Buckland (Freddie Jones). He is escorted to the police situation room. After a brief interrogation he agrees to tell Fallon - whom he knows personally, having trained him as a junior officer - how to disarm the bombs. Time is running out and the dawn detonation is fast approaching. Fallon and Juggernaut have a brief conversation, and, because of their former comradeship, Juggernaut agrees to tell Fallon how to safely disarm the bombs. Juggernaut gives the instruction. Fallon, somehow sensing he is being misled, does the opposite of what he is told, and in so doing is successful in disabling the bomb. The rest of the bomb-disposal unit swiftly follow Fallon's example, and the ship and its passengers are saved.

Cast

 * Richard Harris as Lieutenant Commander Anthony Fallon
 * Omar Sharif as Captain Alex Brunel
 * David Hemmings as Charlie Braddock
 * Anthony Hopkins as Superintendent John McLeod
 * Shirley Knight as Barbara Bannister
 * Ian Holm as Nicholas Porter
 * Clifton James as Corrigan
 * Roy Kinnear as Ship's Social Director Curtain
 * Caroline Mortimer as Susan McLeod
 * Mark Burns as Hollingsworth
 * John Stride as Hughes
 * Freddie Jones as Sidney Buckland/Juggernaut
 * Julian Glover as Commander Marder
 * Cyril Cusack as O'Neil (uncredited)
 * Michael Hordern as Baker (uncredited)
 * Jack Watson as Chief Engineer Mallicent
 * Roshan Seth as Azad
 * Kenneth Colley as Detective Brown
 * Kenneth Cope as Bridgeman
 * John Bindon as Driscoll
 * Ben Aris as The Walker
 * Tom Chadbon as Juggernaut's contact
 * Gareth Thomas as Liverpool Joiner
 * Simon MacCorkindale as No.1 helmsman
 * Andrew Bradford as Jim Hardy, 3rd Officer
 * Paul Antrim as Digby
 * Adam Bridge as David McCleod
 * Rebecca Bridge as Nancy McCleod
 * Michael Egan as Mr Fowlers
 * Freddie Fletcher as 2nd Radio Officer
 * Terence Hillyer as Menzies
 * Barnaby Holme as Christopher Porter
 * Kristine Howarth as Mrs Buckland
 * Victor Lucas as detective
 * Paul Luty as clerk
 * David Purcell as 1st detective
 * Eric Mason as 2nd detective
 * Michael Melia as navigator
 * Doris Nolan as Mrs Corrigan
 * Colin Thatcher as Henning

Development
Richard Alan Simmons' script was inspired by a real life bomb threat against the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1972, which resulted in Special forces (one SAS, two from the Special Boat Squadron and a Welsh bomb disposal expert of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps) being parachuted into the Atlantic to board and search the liner, as dramatized in the film. The film was the second produced by David V. Picker after he left United Artists, following Lenny. Originally Bryan Forbes was to direct, with Simmons producing and Richard Harris to star, with the film going to start in January 1974.

Bryan Forbes left the project, however, as did his replacement, Don Medford. Picker then turned to Richard Lester, with whom he had made a number of films at United Artists. On taking over the film, Lester completely rewrote the script with writer Alan Plater.

The film's writer/producer, Richard Alan Simmons, was so unhappy with the reworked script that he had himself credited as Richard DeKoker on the finished film.

Filming
The film was shot mainly aboard the real cruise ship TS Hamburg. The German vessel had recently been sold to the Soviet Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed TS Maxim Gorkiy. Before the Soviets began operating the ship for paying passengers, the British production company chartered the ship.

Advertisements were run in British papers, soliciting extras who would take a lengthy cruise in the North Sea for free, but with the knowledge that the ship would actually seek out the worst possible weather, as the story demanded seas too rough for the lifeboats to be lowered, trapping the passengers on board.

The ship's charter was negotiated at a set rate in February 1974, while oil prices were continuously skyrocketing due to the still-ongoing 1973 oil crisis. As a result, the Soviets, who paid the vessel's operating costs during filming, ended up losing money on the deal.

Some interior filming was completed on stages at Pinewood Studios. Location shooting was also done in and around London. A room at St Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth overlooking the River Thames doubled as the office of the Managing Director of the shipping line.

Home media
The 2005 UK DVD release used the alternate title Terror on the Britannic. The film was released on Blu Ray by Kino Lorber on 9 September 2014.