Shattered Glass
I think there’s an entertaining movie to be made from the story of disgraced New Republic reporter Stephen Glass. “Shattered Glass” isn’t it.
Basically this movie is Hayden Christensen painting a picture of the most unctuous kiss-ass in history, until you yearn for his inevitable spanking. The spanking part, free of anything all that interesting or unexpected, takes up about 2/3 of the movie. We just see in agonizingly slow detail how Glass’s lies finally got the better of him.
And then it’s over. There’s almost no background, no motivations explored, no context at all, really. And interestingly in a movie about fabricated people and events, few of the characters or situations rang true for me. Glass, as portrayed by Christensen, would have been despised by most of the journalists I’ve known; they’re a cynical lot who don’t put much stock in fawning flattery. And I would have liked to know how a story containing absolutely no real people, places or things made it through the New Republic’s supposedly fanatical fact-checking process.
Plus, Glass’s fellow reporters are portrayed as either ciphers with no personality, or as whiny insecure office gossips. I have trouble believing this depiction of the group of young hotshots supposedly running “the in-flight magazine of Air Force One.”
Maybe that’s the way it really was. But hey, that doesn’t make for a very entertaining or involving movie. Maybe they should have punched it up a little.
Not recommended.