Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion is an incredibly dreary, wet-fizzle of a Canadian cable TV disaster flick that purports to tell the "true" story of the real-life munitions explosion in 1917 that wiped out much of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It doesn't bother me that Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion invents plot lines out of whole cloth (according to the film, German spies were responsible); after all, anyone even remotely familiar with historical feature films understand that they're rarely, if ever, faithful to the facts. But Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion doesn't even get the known facts right, jumbling up a mishmash of tired movie clichés that are furthered deadened by a laughably inept production.

Anchoring the true incident of a WWI munitions ship colliding with another vessel in Halifax harbor, is the story of Captain Charlie Collins (Vincent Walsh), a decorated Canadian soldier on leave who is secretly suffering the effects of shell shock. His father, Patrick (Richard Donat), a proud veteran of the Boer War, doesn't want to hear about Charlie's doubts as to the validity or necessity of the First World War. Charlie also has a doting mother, Millicent (Lynne Griffin), a hero-worshipping younger brother Courtney (Max Morrow), a young sister Connie (Clara Stone), and a rebellious, Communist sympathizer sister, Beatrix (Tamara Hope).

Unfortunately, Beatrix is also something of a dupe, because she's become involved with a mysterious "Dutch" seaman named Ernst (Zachary Bennett), who is in reality a German espionage, responsible for blowing up the Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship leaving New York and headed for Halifax to pick up a convoy escort. Due to wartime demands, normal precautions are thrown out as the Mont-Blanc carries over 2400 tons of TNT - along with hundreds of gallons of fuel, right on topside.

Charlie, who ticked off the town's population when he spoke out against the war, will become a hero again when the Mont-Blanc collides with the Norwegian relief ship Imo, setting off the world's largest pre-atomic explosion. As the town lays devastated, it's up to Charlie, his newly found love Dr. Barbara Paxton (Shauna MacDonald), an American plastic surgeon, and the people of Halifax to not only dig their way out of the tragedy, but to see that justice is done in the subsequent trial of the guilty parties.

James Agee, the brilliant author and movie critic, reviewed a western once where he said - and I paraphrase - "several tons of TNT were exploded - none of it under the people responsible for the picture" (or words to that effect). While I certainly don't advocate such extreme measures for the makers of Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, couldn't someone have lit a fire under them to at least goose up the proceedings, providing even a modicum of excitement, or suspense, or even prurient interest, instead of the turgid, ancient melodrama we're stuck with here? Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion is three hours long, but unfortunately, the blast and its immediate aftereffects - the only source of interest in the whole film - only last about five minutes. Before and after it is a seemingly endless stream of badly staged scenes, indifferently acted and poorly scripted, which leave the viewer not only incorrectly "enlightened" about this true-life tragedy, but decidedly grumpy about our own suffering at the hands of the faltering screenwriter, actors and director.

It's difficult to know which misstep is more egregious: the overall laxness of the production, or the various clichéd plot elements that don't add up to a hill of beans. First and foremost, the added espionage plot is hopelessly undernourished, with the viewer frequently at a loss to understand exactly what purpose the spies provide. It's not even clear if their "device" - which is only alluded to in a telegram - actually sets off the explosion. If the filmmakers won't tell us if the spies are indeed responsible, what's the point of showing them in the first place? And all that blather about civilian targets versus military ones, as well as having Ernst turn out to be a failed hero at the end, trying to scuttle the ship, is from every dime-store spy book and flick going back a hundred years. What's the point of Ernst hooking up with Beatrix? The film doesn't even know, quite frankly, so why should we care if she's going to have his baby after he's blown to smithereens?

As well, a political corruption plot is introduced - again, totally against the actual facts of the case - that smacks more of filmmakers wanting to find easy villain targets instead of writing complex, meaningful plot threads. The constant little digs about Britain and the U.S. are fairly obvious (and almost totally ineffective), with Charlie having the Canadian crowd-pleasing moment of knocking out an obnoxious American doctor. What any of this has to do with the film's The Hindenburg-lite knock-off plot, is anybody's guess. And at the end of the film, when the filmmakers try to score a Titanic-like memory moment, I threw up my hands. What was next: something turning upside-down to work in The Poseidon Adventure?

As for the main protagonist Charlie and his relationship with his family and the enigmatic (read: under-scripted to the point of invisibility) Dr. Paxton, can they be any more trite and rote? Charlie isn't really all that sympathetic anyway, perhaps because the actor portraying him has an array of unpleasant facial grimaces and ticks that suggest in summation, nothing more than difficulty perhaps in swallowing his farina. I didn't buy his "shell shock;" I didn't buy his strained relationship with his father; I didn't buy the ridiculous "meet-cute" moment where he first encounters Barbara (the dialogue, heavy with sexual undertones, is wildly anachronistic for such an encounter), and I didn't believe his stint in the courtroom, where he turns the harbor explosion into some half-baked plea to bring down governments who go to war (since this was made in Canada in 2003, I'll leave it up to you as to what this character was really referring to). Poor acting and worse scripting go hand-in-hand in this mess, overseen by a funereal directing hand, with the true victims of Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion being the audience.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full screen, 1.33:1 video image for Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion looked tight to me in certain spots, to the point where I wondered if it might have been shot widescreen or perhaps as an open matte, intended to be cropped. Grain is a problem, as well as compression issues, and a general softness of color that may have been intentional in the production design, but combined with the other picture anomalies, comes off as faded.

The Audio:
The audio mix is English 2.0 stereo, and it's surprising strong. There are no subtitles or close-caption options.

The Extras:
There are no extras for Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion.

Final Thoughts:
This has to be one of the most boring, bland, colorless disaster "epics" I've ever suffered through. I could get past a script that relies on stock film characters and melodramatic situations that were considered ancient ages ago; after all - it's a disaster movie. Just deliver the goods in a speedy, exciting manner and who the hell cares if the characters are made of cardboard? But Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion can't even manage that; it's swamped in a gray, frigid wake of overwhelming tedium. Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion is dead in the water: skip it, and find a good book on the subject instead.