Rating: 
In the mid-1990s, then-twentysomething Glass was dazzling editors and readers alike with his colorful reports from the front (teenage computer hackers, randy Republicans, Monica Lewinsky condoms). A contributing editor at the New Republic, the industrious scribe was also cranking out stories (quite literally "stories," as it turns out) for George, Harper's, Rolling Stone and other publications. Long before there was Jayson Blair, there was Glass, fabricating his way across the pages of journalism's most respected outlets.
A fabulist in disguise as mild-mannered reporter, and a boyish fellow, as depicted in writer-director Billy Ray's film, with a compulsive need to be liked (his desperate, kidlike mantra: "Are you mad at me?"), Glass is a study in narcissism and neuroses. Unfortunately, Shattered Glass - which stars Star Wars' Hayden Christensen as the dweeby, needy "newsman" - is a study in moviemaking that doesn't resonate beyond its subject matter.
Rendered in a kind of All the President's Men fluorescent cool, the movie details Glass' grand deceptions - and the discovery of those deceptions by an online reporter at the now-defunct Forbes Digital Tool - in crisp, matter-of-fact ways. The performances, from Christensen, Chloë Sevigny (as a New Republic associate) and especially Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Chuck Lane, the newly installed New Republic editor who eventually fires Glass, are sharp.
But Shattered Glass fails on a couple of levels. It never really gives you a sense of the psychology, the root causes behind Glass' elaborate frauds. (There are weird intimations about his possibly being gay, but what that has to do with anything ... ) And since we don't know the why, the how becomes considerably less interesting - a betrayal of journalistic ethics that journalists might find fascinating (and a little frightening), but that general audiences will probably find too inside and self-obsessed to be bothered with.
"Journalism is the art of capturing behavior," is what a beaming Glass declares in a triumphant return to his old high-school journalism teacher's class, where the kids gaze starry-eyed and his old mentor looks as if she's ready to shower him with kisses. Well, journalism is more than that, actually - but Shattered Glass sticks to its protagonist's dictum, and doesn't do much more.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.
Shattered Glass ** 1/2 (out of four stars)
Produced by Craig Baumgarten, Adam Merims, Tove Christensen and Gaye Hirsch, written and directed by Billy Ray, photography by Mandy Walker, music by Mychael Danna, distributed by Lions Gate Films.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins.
Stephen Glass. . . Hayden Christensen
Chuck Lane. . . Peter Sarsgaard
Caitlin Avey. . . Chloë Sevigny
Michael Kelly. . . Hank Azaria
Adam Penenberg. . . Steve Zahn
Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes)
Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse and Ritz Sixteen/NJ
