Juggernaut (1974) Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins Movie Review

Juggernaut (1974)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Richard Harris in Juggernaut (1974)

An Awkward Cruise

Following the luxury cruise ship Britannic setting sail Nicholas Porter (Ian Holm) receives a phone call from an unnamed man who says he has 7 bombs aboard the ship and unless his company pays the £500,000 ransom he will blow up the ship. On that ship is the family of Supt. John McLeod (Anthony Hopkins) who along with his hastily assembled team try to narrow in on who ever the man is behind the threat whilst Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) and his bomb squad are dispatched to the Britannic to locate the bombs and diffuse them, if they can.

"Juggernaut" was released in the UK just 6 days before my 2nd birthday, I say this because having watched it for the first time maybe 30 years later I have to say it didn't do a great deal for me and still didn't when I revisited a day a go. Of course part of the trouble is that this is a 70s action movie with a scenario which has been revisited a few times since and so of course it now feels incredibly dated. But I believe this was also a British take on the whole 70s disaster movie vibe except it never captures the same vibe as those big American movies.

Omar Sharif in Juggernaut (1974)

Now I could say that "Juggernaut" is lacking in star power but it certainly has a lot of famous faces lead by Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Anthony Hopkins. As such it isn't that "Juggernaut" is lacking in stars but the characters themselves are depressingly dull. To put this simply when the movie was over I was unable to tell you single name of a character and just remembered the parts the actors played as ship's captain and explosions expert.

In truth it isn't just the characters which are dull in "Juggernaut" and for me there is a real lack of atmosphere and a lot of mundane scenes. Once in a while a bit of humour is tossed in to there, often thanks to Roy Kinnear, but it has a real awkward feel to it all with cuts to scenes which seem to have no real purpose but to act as filler.

What this all boils down to is that "Juggernaut" has never entertained me like it has some and I reckon that maybe is simply down to having encountered far too long after it was released. But for me the whole atmosphere of the movie was just awkward and made it less than enthralling with only the occasional scene working to get you gripped.


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