JUGGERNAUT (85)

Directed by: Richard Lester (1974)

Starring: Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, Anthony Hopkins, Roy Kinnear

The Pitch: A mad bomber plants seven devices on a transatlantic liner, threatening to blow them up unless a ransom is paid.

Theo Sez: Second viewing, after many years, on a video double-bill with THE TOWERING INFERNO - which is probably the best way to experience it. I have little against INFERNO, a massive, well-mounted spectacle (which I'd rate at around 62), but really this is the way to make a disaster movie - even if, strictly speaking, it's probably closer to that genre's first cousin, the race-against-time thriller. Lester imposes his restless style on the fairly prosaic material - it's all short scenes, overheard comments and snappy, witty dialogue with a kicker at the end of each bit - and gleefully upends the genre's cliches : the far-from-heroic crew mostly grumble and bicker, and the inevitable little kids are pests whose antics result in people getting killed. Yet the constant stream of jokes also serves a larger purpose, questioning the earnestness of sanctifying capital-L Life the way we do : after all, a thousand lives mean little in the grand scheme of things - and certainly mean less than the one life of the person you care for. It's not callous, just cynical about human motivation (not least in its famous, brilliantly-staged ending) and squarely in the anti-heroic, debunking style of other Lester films of the 70s like THE THREE MUSKETEERS and ROBIN AND MARIAN ; that it's more likeable than those movies is probably due to the fact that it's taking on a more kitschy, less beloved genre, though also because its irreverence seems oddly realistic in this context, certainly more so than the pumped-up fakery of most disaster movies - the best thing you can do in the face of impending death probably is to crack jokes, reaffirm your love and dance the night away. A sly, sophisticated movie, and a beautiful job of movie-making.