Hell and High Water

Institute History

  • 1988 Sundance Film Festival

Description

“A consortium of Japanese businessmen, under the auspices of an atomic scientist, hire a submarine full of mercenaries to investigate what the Communists are doing off the coast of Alaska. They discover that the Chinese plan to drop an atomic bomb on Korea and to make it look like the Americans did it.

Adam Jones (Richard Widmark) is a typical Fuller character, the mercenary—the man with a price for living but no reason for dying. His convictions change with his employers. He is a reductio ad absurdum of private enterprise, a free agent admitting responsibility only to himself and to the source of his money . . . Fuller does not state his themes, he shows them. The movie is not so much a violent anti-Communist tract as a tract about violent anti-Communism.”

— David Will

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]