WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Spikeopath Richard Widmark {Capt. Adam Jones} stars in this Cold War thriller as the leader of a submarine expedition to the frozen depths of Alaska. His mission is to thwart the communist Chinese who are intent on kick starting World War 3.Hell and High Water is one of the multitude of pictures that serve only as studio efforts made for made's sake. Take your leading actor, surround them with jobbing actors, and mold a picture together as best as you can. Sometimes a film can break free of its B and C movie roots to truly surprise, but others flounder to only serve as time fillers on terrestrial television. This film falls some where in between the two, not particularly bad exactly, but outside of a couple of tight sequences, not necessarily good either.It was actually in premise, building up to be a promising film. Then we see a shapely pair of legs coming down the submarine stairs and we just know that this film will lose its edge, and sadly, where it's all going to end up. The insistence of many writers and film makers to shoe horn in a love interest in the grittiest of places rarely works, and here it most assuredly doesn't either. Not that Bella Darvi {owner of those shapely legs} is poor or is at fault for the film being average, it just takes the film in a direction that it didn't need to go. Tension is built up, with one face off submarine sequence being particularly hold your breath inducing, but the preposterous romantic angle on a submarine death mission is badly misplaced. Tidy but unmemorable, and cribbing from Crash Dive released eleven years earlier, it's probably one for Widmark purists only. 5/10

writers_reign This is little more than a programmer designed for the undemanding and very much a product of its time. Take the casting, for example, Fox knew they had a good thing in Widmark and seemed bent on keeping him working - this was his nineteenth movie in eight years - as long as he was solid marquee product. He was a much finer actor than that but this was the tail-end of the Studio System. As for the female lead, Darryl Zanuck was a noted swordsman with a penchant for putting his girlfriends in his productions (next up would be Juliette Greco) and who knows, in Polish born Bella Darvi he may have been thinking of a brunette version of Kim Novak though why anyone would want a brunette non-actress as well as a blonde non-actress is one for the Professors. The next factor is the period, this was the era of The Woman On Pier 13, I Was A Communist For The FBI and so on, the Reds under the bed syndrome. Here we have a gang of Reds bent on dropping an atomic bomb on Korea from a B29 thus leaving America with egg on its face. Not to worry, Widmark and his merry men SHOOT it out of the sky from a sub. Say no more.

ed_two_o_nine This is an average post World War II movie that is by no means bad but also a very long way from being great. The film is the story of a group of international privately funded scientist who are on a humanitarian mission to discover if some unnamed communists are conducting nuclear tests in a remote area of the Artic. As a means to their end the scientists recruit Richard Widmark as Captain Jones to captain a sub-marine manned by mercenaries and a two scientists the lead scientist Professor Montell and his glamorous assistant Denise Gerrard (played by the doomed Bella Darvi). Things plod along nicely and for the time the are some tense submarine duel scenes once they engage the enemy. Denise Gerrard and Proffesor Montaell clash with Captain Jones as they have to enter his world though the female character really needed fleshing out. We have some battle as the tension mounts and the enemy base is located leading up to the final battle which works quite well. A few twists along the way add to the mix and some nice morals add to the ending. Worth a go.

bob the moo When yet another atomic scientist goes missing behind the Iron Curtain, a private submarine expedition is put together to trail a freighter suspected of being able to lead the crew to what is believed to be the place where the Chinese are conducting nuclear research in preparation for a war. Former submarine commander Jones is contracted to lead the exhibition with a ragtag crew and a submarine in need of maintenance time that is not available to him. With Professor Montel technically in charge with his (female) assistant Professor Gerard by his side, the boat sets out on the mission of observation but with the ever present threat of danger in the hostile waters.A bit of a romp this one as it revels more in the gaudy sweep of the telling rather than the tension from narrative detail. The plot doesn't really matter so much as it is a simple device for the voyage. Along the way we get personal conflicts, crew tensions and underwater stand-offs as well as some fire-fights. At no point was I hooked but it is rather entertaining in the way that school-boy adventure stories are – full of tough men, sacrifice and action. In this regard it suits the people making it and Fuller directs with simple but bright colours – easy to understand and engage with even if they are too simple to be real. So it is with the characters and plot but it still works. The romantic side of the story is a flop and I didn't see why a female character couldn't just be a character and had to be a love interest (well, obviously I understand why this decision is made, but I didn't see the value of it in the story).The headlining of Richard Widmark is rarely a bad thing and he fits this tough action drama with his stern delivery and commanding presence. There is no doubting that Darvi is sexy and a good presence when it comes to being coy and flirtatious however when more is asked of her she is found wanting as she lacks the range. The rest of the cast fit in well around them – nobody brilliant of course but everyone able to be at the level required by the material.Not that intelligent or complex a film but a solid enough wartime action film which will do the job if that's all you're looking for.