I was pleasantly surprised to discover the existence of ‘Hostile Waters’ a made for TV movie produced in 1997 and starring Rutger Hauer, Martin Sheen and Max Von Sydow. It’s a tale of Cold War paranoia and intrigue set mostly in two submarines, one American and one Soviet.

The plot of ‘Hostile Waters’ mostly revolves around the crew of a Soviet submarine who were on regular patrol duty in international waters off of the East Coast of the USA in the mid 1980’s. The Soviet boat, armed with nuclear missiles targeted at American cities (as many of them were at the time) is being shadowed by a US sub. The Soviet boat made an evasion manoeuvre of a sort that was often done by Soviet sub commanders at the time, but the American sub lost sight of the Soviet vessel and collided with it.

The collision damaged the Soviet vessel and one of the 15 missile silos on the boat was damaged. To complicate matters the missiles were powered by engines that burned hypergolic fuel which spontaneously combusted when the two parts, fuel and oxidiser, were brought together. On top of that the particular fuel/oxidiser combination in the Soviet missiles had the nasty habit of creating noxious and corrosive gasses when exposed to sea water.

The ageing, poorly maintained and crippled Soviet sub suffers a succession of catastrophes that include fire, poisonous fumes and a cooling failure in the sub’s nuclear propulsion reactors.

This is an engaging and gripping movie based loosely on real life events and is set against the attempts by American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikial Gorbachev to negotiate a strategic nuclear weapons reduction treaty. This could have been one of those moments when one side or the other could have thought that the other side was about to launch a first strike nuclear attack. Thankfully in this case wiser counsel prevailed and actions that could have been seen as preparation for a strike were seen for what they really were which were desperate attempts to deal with the Soviet sub’s problems.

I discovered this film via an episode of ‘The History Guy‘ on You Tube which I’ve found is a fascinating series on little snippets of history that may have been forgotten or even over looked as time has gone on. History Guy related the true back story to the events in ‘Hostile Waters’ and inspired me to watch this movie. I really enjoyed this movie and I hope that you enjoy it too.  Although I enjoyed it this may not be the best of movies for those who dislike enclosed spaces as most of this movie is set inside submarines that are by their very nature cramped.

Please note that this copy of the film is topped and tailed with adverts but please do not let this put you off watching it