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Retelling the truly fascinating story of journalist Stephen Glass who was able to fool the New Republic and several other credible publications with his partially (and sometimes completely) fabricated articles Billy Ray's Shattered Glass is a bit of a mixed bag.
It does a solid job of recounting the basic facts surrounding Glass' deceptions and is helped along nicely by a wonderful performance by Hayden Christensen who perfectly embodies the charms and annoyances of an overeager, endlessly deceptive human being. However, there are numerous secondary characters that simply populate the screen. Peter Sarsgaard as Glass' editor and Steve Zahn as the man who finally sees through the deceptions are mostly bland and seem poor foils for Christensen's Glass.
This is a shame because the story is very fascinating. Its just that when the performances are mostly flat one has a hard time believing that the stakes (I think Ray intends to have his viewers believe that journalistic integrity is on the line here) are truly getting raised. The moments in which the movie should be at its peak are instead its weakest. When Glass' fabrications are found out by Zahn it is almost unbelievable. As a viewer it is hard to be on the edge of your seat when the only detective work needed to break one of history's greatest stories about the failure of journalistic integrity is a couple of Yahoo searches and some phone calls.
That being said there is definitely some interesting stuff at work here. Ray effectively blurs the line between reality and fiction, a motif that gives real insight into the titular persona and his portrayal of a man on the verge of losing his livelihood is particularly resonant. Strangely enough it could have used a bit of the Stephen Glass treatment. Instead of simply retelling events faithfully (which I believe Ray does) he could have punched the story up a bit to give the viewer a palpable sense of tension and importance. Taken as a portrait of a quasi-artist, however, Shattered Glass is a success.
7/10
