In honor of the ill-fated Roy Kinnear

theowinthrop

The plot of JUGGERNAUT is similar to other films, such as Frank Sinatra's earlier ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (wherein his group threaten to torpedo the Queen Mary unless a ransom is paid). Here the great ship H.M.S. Britannic (what an ill-fated name for a great liner: the real "Britannic" was the larger sister ship of the "Olympic" and "Titanic" and sunk by hitting a mine in the Aegian off the isle of Cos in 1916) is booby-trapped by a man who is demanding a large ransom or he'll sink the ship with his bombs and kill it's passengers and crew. While the police (Anthony Hopkins) seek the extortionist, they send a bomb deactivation expert (Richard Harris) and his crew of assistants (led by David Hemming) to find and defuse the booby traps (one or two are exploded - the extortionist wants to show he means what he says - before they can start). The Captain of the ship (Omar Shariff) has to maintain calm among the 1,200 passengers and crew, and is depending on one man to do this - his cruise director (Roy Kinnear). The film bills up several very good suspense moments, even killing off one of the characters in an explosion. And it builds to a close call climax that grips the audience. Certainly this is one of the best suspense thrillers.

Which takes me to the one performance I like best in it. In his career, tubby, bald Roy Kinnear usually played comic parts. Even when he popped up as a villain in a series (like some episodes of THE AVENGERS, or like the film SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER), he is so confused and inept that he ends up making the viewers feel for him. In the Sherlock Holmes film, in a fight with Gene Wilder, Kinnear is kicked in the groin with a huge wooden boot from a shoe store). He ends up on the street trying to hail a hansom cab and yelling "Taxi" with a soprano voice! But only here, in JUGGERNAUT, was he able to find a role that let him expand a bit. He has to keep up the morale of 1,000 people who may die soon. He will die with them if that happens. And in a sweet scene he admits to a woman (Shirley Knight) the real fear and cowardice he feels but has to hide. It is a wonderful moment of subtle acting, and Kinnear never repeated it. The closest to it was in the film THE HILL where he breaks down during a punishment detail in a stockade. But this time he was a total innocent type.

Roy Kinnear never had much of a chance to build on this. He was dead within a couple of years in a freak horse accident during the filming of THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, which his friend the director Richard Lester dedicated to his memory. He fell off a horse in a sequence and fractured his pelvis, bleeding to death within a few hours. A tragic end for a gifted comic actor, who at least once showed his dramatic potential in a good performance in JUGGERNAUT.

score 10/10

theowinthrop 9 April 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1854941/