Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion

The Halifax Explosion was a turning point in Canadian history. It shook a young country, but left it stronger, if not more sober.

The CBC's "Shattered City" uses fiction to tell the story of the Halifax Explosion. Some of the actors put in good performances, although many are stiff. My major grievance is with the use of fiction. The viewer is not able to discern truth from fantasy. In fact, at the film's conclusion, a short clip shows the actors explaining they had not ever learned anything about the Hfx Explosion. This may be true for many Canadians, as well as people in other countries. The story has little to teach us, because it fails to recognize the greatness of the real story.

It was nice to see another good movie about the Maritimes. There were certain things that lacked or needed more explanation, but on the whole it was an enjoyable movie based on true events. Most people have never even heard of the Halifax explosion; so, this movie should provide some info. The actors did a good job portraying their characters. It was wonderful to see Zachary Bennett (Ernest) again, whom most would remember as Felix King in the "Road to Avonlea" series. Unfortunately his character only appears in the first part and we never hear of him after that. This is a good movie to sit back in the evening and enjoy.

I really liked Vincent Walsh as the lead. He was very convincing in both the family-oriented scenes and the action stuff. The impending tragedy and the mundane actions that led to it were well-played and very gripping. It was nice to see a number of veteran Canadian actors like Lynne Griffin and Graham Green in large and small roles. I also thought the subplot about German saboteurs was both nicely diverting and added to the suspense. While Canadian productions can never hope to compete with Hollywood for budget and special effects, they can provide a Canadian "feel" to a project and "Shattered City" does that very well.

While this movie, and The Perfect Storm, and many others about war, ships and whatever else may be BASED on true stories and events...they are NOT true stories.

As there was NOT always somebody in every location at every second to document the event and the speeches and actions that people did, much of this story is fiction.

I found the movie interesting, that's for sure.

I found it a good insight to the event with a basic understanding to the incident...but it is still partially fiction.

What did impress me very much was that a film of this magnitude, a huge cast, a huge set, special effects and locations can be filmed for only 10 million dollars while a movie which takes place in very few locations with very few actors, few effects, few sets and much less than this film had will be shot for three or 4 times the budget.

Whoever worked the finances on this movie should be in public office to deal with the finances the Canadian and Provincial Governments budget problems.

They obviously know how to control the spending of money to the extreme.

Make-up, set design, acting and everything else was great too.

I am just overly impress with the people behind the cash flow...they really know how to spend the money, so that every cent is made to work.

Unfortunately like many Canadians I had never heard about this event in school. It wasn't until my 20th year when I visited Halifax for the first time that I learnt of this horrific tale. This movie did an adequate job at telling the story. The acting was competent as was the over-all story (although I thought the German spy thing came across as silly). I particularly liked the acting of the two youngest children of the family that this movie revolves around.

I don't know if it was me or not but there seemed to be a lot more commercial breaks than in regular made for TV movies. As soon as the plot started moving it had to stop for yet another commercial break and being produced by the CBC and funded by corporate sponsors we see the same commercials over and over again which ruined my experience watching the movie.

This is a story that needs to be told and should never be forgotten. It is as devastating as "Sept 11".