OPENS MAY 14, CERT 15, 95 MINS
It happened recently with Jayson Blair at The New York Times, and it happened in 1998 with Stephen Glass at The New Republic?the story retold here. The lauded, popular journalist is on a hot streak, finding great stories and influencing the US’s political heartbeat. Only thing is, the journalist is lying, inventing these stories out of thin air due to an eagerness to please and a lust for fame. When he’s exposed, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
Director Billy Ray’s debut feature tells its own true story with gradually increasing tension, and Glass (Hayden Christensen, bravely doing some proper acting) is such a smug, sycophantic prick from the off that we relish his humiliation.
Despite some sentimental guff about how saintly editors are (the catch with true stories is the living must be flattered), both Hank Azaria and Peter Sarsgaard are brilliant as the mag’s supremos, and the idealistic office’s internal politics are well nuanced by Chlo