Shattered Glass: Critic Reviews

Right from the start, Hayden Christensen is a revelation.

An astute and surprisingly gripping drama not only about the ethics of magazine writing, but also, more generally, about the subtle political and psychological dynamics of modern office culture.

Christensen is so good in the role ... that you wonder anew what went wrong with his performance as Anakin Skywalker in the last Star Wars.

The interplay between [Stephen] Glass and [Charles] Lane is riveting and rigorous.

A satisfying, dramatically absorbing account.

Smart about good vs. evil.

Like its subject, the movie is self-important yet insipid.

Next to the subsequent Jayson Blair debacle at The New York Times, the Glass affair is about as scandalous as a condom found in the parking lot at a National Youth Christian Leadership Conference.

It's funny and gripping, a story about people that also happens to be about journalistic principle.

Here's a verdict that Shattered Glass makes abundantly clear: Hayden Christensen can act.

A good movie about a real-life problem journalist that unfortunately has almost nothing to do with journalism's real-life problems.

The movie is smart about journalism because it is smart about offices.

Sarsgaard plays Lane with great subtlety and grace.

A study in moviemaking that doesn't resonate beyond its subject matter.

It takes craft, insight and expert delivery to make an 'insider' story interesting to those on the outside. And that's exactly what Shattered Glass does.

It's a thoughtful, well-paced look at one pathetic kid's lies, and our equally pathetic willingness to accept them as truth.

Although this is a journalism movie, it carries the wide appeal of a modern-day morality play.

About as well executed as any movie I've seen this year.

Even if you don't care much about the responsibility of the press, I think you will find this cautionary tale one terrific movie.

A sober, wry and often riveting account of an infamous moment in journalism.

Does a superb job in presenting four of the five journalistic 'Ws' of its story: the who, what, where and when. It fails, however, on the essential 'why' of the tale.

What are we to learn from this? Not the broad lesson that every line of work has its share of charlatans: The script is way too pious to swallow such a generic pill. And not anything important about Glass, since there's no real character examination.