Yes, you've got a terrific cast here and the potential for a gripping thriller. Unfortunately, in spite of the presence of such legendary stars as Omar Sharif, Anthony Hopkins and Richard Harris, the film is an excruciating bore that seems to focus on explaining as to how this situation is being dealt with as opposed to showing much of the action in making that happen. A rather creepy voice makes several sinister sounding phone calls threatening a luxury liner with explosion in the middle of an ocean cruise. Sounding sort of like another doomed sea vessel on screen from just a few years ago, this misses characters you really want to see spared, and time with the passengers seems like a script afterthought. Attempts at humor fall flat and the mystery of who is threatening to blow up this ship and why isn't intriguing enough for the audience to care.There are moments when the film comes to a screeching halt, hitting empty air plot wise with a thud. Realizing an hour in to this lifeless bore that I wanted to see the whole thing speed up, I knew I'd be severely disappointed. There have been disaster films that were so bad that they become funny, but this doesn't even rank as a disastrous bomb. What it does end up being is one that wastes some fine actors pretending to be reciting intelligent dialog and dealing with a complex plot, but all it is turns out to be as exciting as trying to paddle a canoe through quicksand. Nowhere to go but down, and if the boat doesn't sink, you're basically stuck in muck not safe to try and escape from. For an hour and 20 minutes of needless exposition before anything else happens, by the time something does, it's pretty much too little, too late.

A Major Flop at the Time, this Nail-Biter of a Suspense Film was Marketed as and had the Trappings of One of those Disaster Films of the Early Seventies. It is More Subtle and Underplayed than Those Types and Relies Mainly on Close-Up Bomb Squad Stuff on the Ocean Liner, Intercut with On-Land Police Procedure.It Does Have a Hefty Cast Featuring Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, Anthony Hopkins, Ian Holm, and Others. Director Richard Lester was the Third Director Hired and He Took Over the Shoot Entirely. He Restrained His Usual Comedic Slants, for the Most Part, and Made the Move as a No Nonsense Thriller.Not All of it Works, but Enough of it Does to be a Satisfying and Claustrophobic Thriller that is Tense, but Without Much Big-Budget Looking SFX and Expected Big-Screen Extravagances that This Type Trended to Be.Overall, Worth a Watch for the Acting and the All Around Professionalism, but is Better Enjoyed Without Disaster Movie Expectations. Better than its Reputation and its Initial Undeserving Overlook.

Richard Lester's "Juggernaut" appears to finally getting the respect it deserves as a superbly human suspense film. Plot: seven bombs are placed aboard ocean liner. High seas prevent lifeboat evacuation. Royal Navy bomb disposal team is airdropped to defuse devilishly clever bombs or everybody goes down with the ship. So ignore the copy line "The Greatest Sea Adventure Ever filmed" (it's not even a "sea adventure," it's a "bomb disposal adventure" and hello, it may be "the greatest bomb disposal movie ever filmed.") Superb performances by the best actors in GB, with Lester's gift for finding human moments amid all the tension--lost kids, scared clowns, heroic Indian stewards, humane policemen, witty upper class faded beauties plus the requisite alpha studs dealing with a terrible situation, all of it original. Note also how the red-blue theme is woven throughout the production (first image: red, blue streamers entangled as ship departs and the film comes down to a RN bomb disposal expert's choice between life and death when he must decide to cut a red or blue wire.) Lester constricts his own famous "style," the free-wheeling, goofily improvisational aspects of his Beatles films, and keeps the plot tight, the suspense high, the human vignettes touching, and the look and feel of the film entirely fresh. Thanks to Kino-Lorber for rescuing this superb film from the memory hole; it belongs with a few other diamond-perfect thrillers like "Charlie Varrick" and "The Third Man."

This movie is somewhat different than its cousin THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. This one doesn't have any over the top acting or action. It isn't overblown in any campy way. It does have a fantastic all-star cast (Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Shirley Knight, Omar Shariff and Ian Holm to name a few), loads of good dialogue, suspense and honest human emotion. . What happens is a mysterious bomber threatens to detonate a series of bombs aboard a huge luxury liner, the Britannic, unless his demands are met. What follows is tense human drama, as time slowly ticks away while the bomber and his bombs are sought before he can destroy the ship. This is directed by Richard Lester and is one of his best, and ironically, one of his more lesser known films.