Hostile Waters is a British 1997 television film about the loss of the Soviet Navy's K-219, a Yankee I class nuclear ballistic missile sub.

In 1986, the Soviet Navy submarine K-219 performs a Crazy Ivan, and USS Aurora collides with her, causing a rupture of the seal on one of its ballistic missile tubes.

A new crisis develops: Both nuclear reactors are overheating, and the cooling rods must be lowered manually by two crew members who have only limited oxygen left.

Throughout the crisis, Washington insists that no information on the possibility of nuclear fallout along the eastern American coastline be leaked to the Governors and no evacuation plans be activated to protect the population, in order not to derail the forthcoming Reykjavik Summit between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

"[2] John Preston wrote a highly positive review for The Sunday Telegraph: "it had a terrific cast, must have cost a fortune to make and proved to be the most gripping thing I've seen since – since Edge of Darkness".

[3] In a tongue-in-cheek review, Jim Shelley in The Guardian also praised Hauer's performance: "Rutger saunters through it all with considerable aplomb, bestowing upon even his most staccato speeches a kind of suave grandeur, like Clark Gable in The Misfits.

Variety wrote that "the characters are simplistically drawn, which, for this genre, is not necessarily a bad thing" but praised Hauer's acting and the technical aspects.

[7] Igor Britanov himself took out a lawsuit against HBO's parent company Warner Bros., alleging that the film-makers had not sought his permission to portray him and that the film made him look incompetent.

After three years of hearings, in 2004 an American court found in his favour and awarded him damages: Britanov declined to say how much, but Russian media reported this as tens of thousands of dollars.