Not a disaster movie but a bomb disposal thriller. Such films are tricky to make because while it is a terrifying job on screen it's usually someone poking around wires and the bomb goes off or it doesn't and since Richard Harris is the star you can be confident it won't.
But the joy in this comes more with the peripheral details -the location footage of the cruiser (on the North Sea), David Hemmings and Harris and jo skydiving out of a plane, the quality of the cast, Omar Sharif's ship captain casually picking up Shirley Knight, Anthony Hopkins' constantly exhausted and sea sick wife, Roy Kinnear desperately trying to keep spirits up, the Pakistani waiter with a thick Scouser accent, Freddie Jones' superb performance as a resentful villain, Harris' cocky swagger (the best moment is him at the end clapping "Fallon's a legend").
Director Richard Lester said he had a great time making this and you can sense that.
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