Shattered Glass (2003)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Stephen Glass	Hayden Christensen	½
Charles Lane	Peter Sarsgaard	½
Caitlin Avey	Chloë Sevigny
Andy Fox	Rosario Dawson	-
Amy Brand	Melanie Lynskey	½
Michael Kelly	Hank Azaria
Adam Penenberg	Steve Zahn
Lewis Estridge	Mark Blum	-
Catarina Bannier	Simone-Élise Girard	-
David Bach	Chad Donella	-
Aaron Bluth	Jamie Elman	-
Rob Gruen	Luke Kirby	-
Marty Peretz	Ted Kotcheff	-

Review

The remarkable story about up-and-coming The New Republic journalist Stephen Glass, who in 1998 was revealed to have been fabricating several of his feature articles, is brought to the screen more with a fascination for how this could happen in a reputable magazine than with the human side of the scandal. Writer Billy Ray (Color of Night, The Hunger Games) makes his directorial debut and instils some nice formulaic touches, such as a parallel narrative presentation: one classically told, the other consisting of Glass telling his story to a media class after-the-fact. Hayden Christensen plays Glass, and is able to give him a similar air of eerie charisma and mystique that Matt Damon gave the title character in The Talented Mr. Ripley. What Christensen's character lacks, however, is any kind of depth, which is arguably a conscious choice on Ray's part. He leaves Glass' personality and psyche up in the air, either because he wants to surround him with as much mystery as possible, or because he doesn't want to demonize him more than what the story already does – or both. It works, but it also makes you watch Shattered Glass from a distance. This is a cerebral film, not an emotional one. But it's certainly worth a watch. Peter Sarsgaard stands out among a whole bunch of fine supporting performances.