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So, do you cut the red wire or the blue wire? One neutralizes the explosive device, while the other kills everyone with an almighty smile. As you make your decision, the traditional, sadistically pointless digital clock that is serving as the device’s timer inexorably counts down to zero, tick, tock, tick, tock, until the point where it becomes too late. With the sweat pouring off your forehead, you realize that the fingers holding the pliers are directly starting to slip, further complicating the situation. So, blue wire. red wire. tick tick tick.
Now, that’s what I call being triggered. While the rest of the nation went into denial about the IRA campaign, I was completely speechless at the sheer brilliance of the movie Juggernaut. There are so many thrilling scenes, like watching someone attempt to diffuse a bomb. It glitched the head of your childhood self, so I decided to go rush to the Watford Odeon cinema as one of the big screens upstairs, which now has two mini screens near the stalls. All I remember are those flimsy, boxy screens.
Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 a couple of years ago, Juggernaut, which starred Richard Harris alongside David Hemmings, is a fictional piece that stems from a terrifying mega bomb that supposedly goes off in the ocean. This bomb goes off in a transatlantic ocean liner called the Britannic, which is set to sail from Southampton to New York. During the premise of the piece, the Irish accent bomber calls the owners of the liner to demand a bizarre ransom of £500,000, which isn’t much at all. He is infused with character as opposed to an American Dr. Evil figure who demands a million. The character heavily relies on alcohol and plays the reeling, tough pistol who is dropped on the boat with his crew. Richard Harris fights to the top alongside his loyal assistant David Hemmings.
If you ask me, the cast of Juggernaut was brilliant. Other than Harris, there was the never fully awake and ever so slightly confused Omar Sharif, who performed as the captain of the ship that was having an affair with one of the beautiful passengers played by Shirley Knight. He was not very convincing in his role. Ian Holm plays the company chief and Anthony Hopkins is the Scotland Yard cop who is traveling with his wife and kids on the Britannic. Roy Kinnear is the overzealous entertainment director who at one stage really does shout Hi-de-hi in a rather frantic haze. Roshan Seth is the Ugandan Asian steward who speaks white Brit when the situation demands him to do so. Clifton James, an American veteran character actor, plays an American tourist. He was the glaring sheriff in the Bond films Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. Cyril Cusack provided a voice to one of the interrogated IRA’s old timers who was completely uncooperative. This questioned IRA veteran was in ideal surroundings where he was comfortable. To his utter astonishment, he was actually asked as to who may have been behind this whole scenario. His answer would now be viewed as incredibly civil. His errands are far removed from this and in the present context, are quite superbly crafted. The director is Richard Lester, while the writer is Richard Alan Simmons, who after a dispute regarding the change of his script, demanded to be known as Richard DeKoker. (Once more, this information is something new to me.)
I walked out popping open the nuts of my topative carton and diving into the Kia Ora drink before stumbling into the quiet town of Watford High Street.
As a 12-year-old, I truly loved Juggernaut, though I always considered it one of those B-horror look out the window type of movies alongside the Poseidon Adventure. But even now, when I watch the movie, its thunderous weather is a good spectacle. Turning with the thought that ‘this is a cover of America’ served as a reminder that the movie was shot in Blighty and not California. The tomb ship the Britannic is in no way as sleek and glossy as James Cameron’s Titanic. It was a real ship and like every old ship in the world, it came with rust marks or unsightly markings where the anchor was placed. The interiors of the ship make it feel like Ikea, it’s a real ship that looks like a ropey cross-channel ferry. Even as I watched it through all sides of it popping open the carton of Maltesers and pouring my Kia Ora drink, it washed over me. Only after was I able to make sense of the empty weekday sun of Watford High Street, along with the dull shoe shop world and clement cellar shop. In all honesty, this was no less glamorous than the bare and somewhat washed-out Britannic. While I strolled over the depressed world of superpassive passengers, trying to make sense of the new magic on board them and touched the only half-shining world of the shy passengers. Some years after Linsday Anderson’s Britannia too served as a metaphor for the eloquent conditions of Britain queuing up at Versailles. Perhaps, just maybe, we intend to take tight-knit and strophe thinking when talking about rudder ships or over-shriveled ocean liner Britannic.
So as I sat down to watch it again, I couldn’t find Juergermnaut nearly as funny as I had hoped.
Things like the kids playing on the rudimentary Pong computer and other handheld console games will be cherished by 70s fans. And we are treated to some overly outdated novelty ‘executive’ desk toys that were all the rage in those days.
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