Movie Info

Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, is an epic film that dramatizes a compelling piece of Canadian history. It is the story of how a tragic ...(read more...) incident at the height of the First World War became a living metaphor for the worldwide conflict, and how Halifax arose from the ashes after severe destruction and devastation. In the early hours of December 6, 1917, the Mont Blanc, a French-owned freighter loaded to the gunnel's with thousands of tons of TNT, collided with a Belgian relief ship and exploded in the Halifax Harbor. The explosion was so vast that it killed more than 2,000 people, injured 9,000 more and completely flattened two square kilometers of northern Halifax. The drama settles mostly on one family, the Collins, who's eldest son Charlie, a captain in the Royal Canadian Army, who tries to find the rest of his family including his fatally injured father, as well as his mother, and other siblings among the rubble, and later finds himself as a lawyer defending the Mont Blanc's captain, Le Medec, and the harbor helmsman, Fracis Mackay, in court on the tragic explosion by the vindictive authorities looking for a scapegoat in the tragedy. Graham Greene and Pete Postlethwaite lead an outstanding cast in chronicling the remarkable effort to rebuild the Nova Scotia city, a community devastated by tragedy that found the strength and courage to rise from the ashes.

Director: Bruce Pittman

MPAA: Unrated

Release Date: Dec 31, 2003

Cast: Brian Downey, Gordon Michael Woolvett, Graham Greene, Vincent Walsh, John Dunsworth, Leon Pownall, Lynne Griffin, Max Morrow, Paul Doucette, Pete Postlethwaite, Richard Donat, Shauna MacDonald, Tamara Hope