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On the face of it 'Juggernaut' is a fairly small scale nerve-stretcher about an attempt to hold a shipping company to ransom by placing seven very large and very intricately designed bombs in an Atlantic liner. 1200 assorted passengers and crew will go to the bottom if bomb-disposal expert Richard Harris can't outwit the madman responsible for placing the bombs.
So far, so conventional. But compare 'Juggernaut' with another 1974 release, 'The Towering Inferno'. There aren't any macho heroics here: no all-knowing architect and fire-chief to handle the crisis and provide leadership. Nor are there any 'we must never let this happen again' uplifting platitudes at the end.
In 'Juggernaut' we see flawed and desperate people trying to control circumstances over which they have no real power. The company head constantly dithers over paying the ransom or not; the Government representative is a sneering bully who 'won't give in to people like this' (it then turns out the bomber was a Government explosives expert who was given a pitiful reward for a lifetime of courageous work disarming bombs); the bomb-disposal expert has seen death so many times it has lost its meaning for him, it's a human inevitability however it happens, and that's that. Some people feel Roy Kinnear's entertainments officer is a too-obvious attempt at comic relief, but here again we see someone who is supposed to do his best in all circumstances but comes up against the limitations of his personality and is just as afraid as everyone around him.
And the ending? No sense of 'achievement' in having defused the bombs. Good men, friends and colleagues, have been killed. Richard Harris walks alone on deck, smoking his pipe and nursing a drink. What is he thinking? About the men he has lost, or the inevitable next job that may see his own death? Meanwhile, the ship sails on across the eternal sea.
'Juggernaut' is well-acted and well-scripted (with dialogue by Alan Plater). Dick Lester's direction is less top-heavy with stylistic touches than usual, and he has a particularly deft touch in giving the viewer a sense of isolation and claustrophobia as the bombs are dismantled. This film can act as a piece of Sunday-afternoon escapism or something more thought-provoking. Highly recommended.
score /10
vaughan-birbeck 6 December 2004
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0972975/ |
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24-2-2021 04:56:03