One doesn’t usually associate director Richard Lester with the suspense genre, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t great at it. His one foray into the nailbiting narrative form follows bomb disposal expert Richard Harris (This Sporting Life, A Man Called Horse), called in by the British government to head up a special unit to defuse a cluster of bombs on an ocean liner caught in stormy seas. A lunatic calling himself Juggernaut is demanding 500,000 pounds ransom for the key to stopping detonations which will go off the following day. Omar Sharif (Dr. Zhivago) is the ship’s captain, trying in vain to keep all hell from breaking loose on his beleaguered vessel. David Hemmings (Blow Up) is Harris’ right-hand man, and Freddy Jones (The Elephant Man) is Juggernaut, the embittered former explosives expert who coincidentally trained Harris years before. When Jones’ character is apprehended mid-story by Scotland Yard Superintendent Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs), the tension escalates as Harris, in communication with land by a radio link, tries to convince his former teacher to come to his senses. But Jones is wily, cynical and deceptive, something which will cause plenty of grief before the saga wraps up in a surprising conclusion. The lead-up to Juggernaut’s production was as turbulent as the rough seas in the film, with two different directors, Bryan Forbes (The Stepford Wives) and Don Medford (The Hunting Party) originally attached. Once Lester took over the reins, he worked with writer Alan Plater in completely rewriting Richard Alan Simmons’ original script. Co-starring Shirley Knight, Ian Holm, Clifton James and Roy Kinnear.
“A penetrating and sardonic commentary on a fading and troubled Britain… The pace of the thriller aspect is unflagging, and the characters are unerringly drawn, from the perfect casting of Sharif as the seedy, demoralised captain, to Harris as the bomb expert (the film’s research in this direction is painstaking). Without a doubt, one of the best movies of 1974.” – Time Out
“Filmmaker Richard Lester is known for the films he did with the Beatles, but 1974’s Juggernaut proved he could direct a terrific thriller…with the best of them.” – Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
Marc Edward Heuck discusses our Richard Lester Film Festival on the New Beverly blog.
Chris D explores Richard Lester’s diverse career on the New Beverly blog.
