‘Waters’ Surfaces With Near-Nuclear Event

If the premise of HBO’s “Hostile Waters” is correct, the world came a lot closer to nuclear disaster in the mid-’80s than the public ever suspected.

The taut, intensely dramatic and continuously compelling story takes place almost completely within the claustrophobic confines of Soviet and American submarines. It chronicles a dangerous encounter that reportedly took place in the North Sea shortly before the 1986 Reykjavik Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The possibility for such a tragedy was ever present in the increasingly confrontational cat-and-mouse games played beneath the seas by Soviet missile submarines and U.S. hunter-killer subs in the Cold War environment of the ‘80s. The two boats in “Hostile Waters,” after tracking each other through evasive maneuvers, accidentally collide. The U.S. craft is undamaged, but a hatch on the Soviet boat--the K-219--is cracked, allowing seawater to flow through, setting off a massive explosion.

The crippled submarine, which is obliged to take the unprecedented action (for a Soviet nuclear sub) of surfacing, is now potentially on the verge of a disaster in which its nuclear missiles could explode, releasing lethal nuclear fallout over a large portion of the northeastern United States.

And there lies the crux of the story: What will it take to prevent the missiles from exploding? Will the American Naval Command--which is not completely informed about the situation on the Soviet vessel--exercise sufficient restraint and not attempt to sink K-219?

The film builds to a heart-stopping conclusion, with the Soviet sub’s commander, Capt. Igor Britanov (in a superb, utterly believable portrayal by Rutger Hauer), at the heart of the action. On the American boat tracking the situation, Martin Sheen plays the skipper with an icy, do-it-by-the-numbers intensity.

In smaller roles, Max von Sydow is appropriately focused as the Soviet commanding admiral overseeing the crisis, and Rob Campbell brings a touching compassion to the crucial character of Sergei Preminin, a young naval conscript.

Is “Hostile Waters” a true story? The producers cite extensive research for the film, which included interviews with Britanov and other survivors of the Russian submarine.

The U.S. Navy, however, does not comment upon submarine operations, and a message from the producers at the start of the picture notes that “to this day the United States government denies the accident occurred.”

A succeeding message, however, asserts, “The evidence says it did.”

* “Hostile Waters” airs tonight at 9 on HBO.