We've all heard about the controversy recently at the New York Times, where a young journalist was caught faking the details. But that was nothing compared to what Stephen Glass pulled off at The New Republic a couple years ago.

The story is told pitch perfectly in Billy Ray's directorial debut, "Shattered Glass."

Told by Glass himself -- played by Hayden Christensen -- who is addressing students in the high school journalism class we he had sat just a few years earlier, "Shattered Glass" is a lesson in trust and ethics.

Glass is a journalism phenom and by the time he's 24, he's not only written for a long list of magazines, including Rolling Stone, he's an editor at the prestigious New Republic, often called the in-flight magazine on Air Force One.

Glass' insightful investigative stories are fun, exciting and interesting and he's the envy of the entire staff, including of his colleague Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), who becomes editor when Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria) is fired in a controversial move by meddling publisher Marty Peretz (Ted Kotcheff).

Like Michael Jackson, Glass is handicapped by skyrocketing success arriving at an early age and his personality encourages him to want to be the center of attention and fuels his desire to please his colleagues, his editor, his readers.

This is a dangerous cocktail, especially when one of his stories looks pretty suspicious to a crew of Internet journalists, who begin to dig deeper and find that there are more than a few holes in Glass' riotous tale of a hackers convention where one young computer whiz has inked a top-dollar deal to do computer security for a company whose computers were hacked by the whiz.

Soon, Glass unwittingly pits The New Republic staff against its editor as investigations into Glass' previous stories begin.

Based on a true story - and an article by Buzz Bissinger -- this engaging film interweaves questions of truth, journalistic ethics, trust, lies and character assassination.

It's also a fascinating film to watch and the entire cast - which also includes Chloe Sevigny, Luke Kirby, Rosario Dawson and Melanie Lynskey -- is great, partially because even in the end, we're never really sure what to think about a guy like Chuck Lane or indeed about Glass himself.

"Shattered Glass" opens Fri., Nov. 14 at Landmark's Oriental Theatre.