How sad is this?

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Yes, It's a story about a washed out teacher with a drug problem.. But what I love about this film is that he feels close, similar, like it happened to you.No one is bad or good, they're all just human. A film that teaches us that connection comes from the soul, not from age. There are no dramas, no over the top fights, screams or disasters... Witness how life happens under unfruitful circumstances and how it always continues.

Half Nelson follows a drug-addicted teacher who, after one of his students catching him doing drugs, forms a friendship with her. Ryan Gosling snagged his first Oscar nomination for this movie, and it was absolutely deserved. This guy pulls off one of my favorite performances of his. He's got a lot of depth to him, and you can tell just from one look that he's into the performance. He actually looks like a drug addict in a way, but his suffering is clear under that as well. Everything is on this guy's face, and he pulls it off so perfectly that I can't help but acknowledge it. Surprisingly, Shareeka Epps does a really good job as well as Drey, the girl who catches her teacher in the first place. The movie is shot with a hand-held camera, and for the style of film that it is, this works really well. It's a rough-around-the-edges style that suits the movie. It's not full of perfectly steady shots that detract from the general feel of suffering in the film. There are a lot of great things about the movie, but most can be encompassed by the writing. Something that stood out to me right away was how realistic it was. Not in the drug addiction aspect, but in the teaching aspect. Dan is a teacher, and the screenplay really captures what a school classroom is like. It isn't terribly difficult to capture this, but I think that of all the movies I've seen this one really takes the cake for how a classroom really operates. And the movie as a whole manages to be pretty realistic too. The characters are really well fleshed out in this movie. It's not just all about Dan's drug addiction or its effects on his life. His character is well realized and his relationships with others are authentic and well-written. Overall Half Nelson is a fantastically well-written, acted, and directed film. Gosling's performance alone is enough to make this a film worth seeing, and in the end I would definitely recommend it.

Ryan Gosling's quietly intense performance in the lead role is the centerpiece of a troubling but watchable 2006 drama called HALF NELSON, a film which sends some troubling mixed messages, some inaccurate information, and, considering the subject matter, never provides the payoff that it should.Gosling plays Dan Dunne, a high school teacher and girls' basketball coach at a Brooklyn high school, who is caught smoking crack in the girls' locker room by one of his students named Dray (Shareeka Epps) and the disturbing directions that this event take the relationship between the two.This is a troubling story on several levels and though I kept watching, found myself squirming for most of the film's running time. I was initially bothered by the fact that after after this event, over 30 minutes of screen time pass before Dan and Dray discuss what happened. Prior to this, Dan acts as if nothing happened and Dray doesn't tell anyone, though the scene where she catches Dan, you can see it in her face that her opinion of the man has seriously altered. She has the power to help the man by reporting what she saw but she doesn't. She actually starts spending more time with him, which is wrong on all kinds of levels and he does nothing to stop it.Another problem with a story that is supposedly about addiction is that we never really see Dan suffer any consequences of his actions. Addiction has consequences and Dan pretty much sails through the running time without any serious consequences. The closest things to consequences the character suffers are a fat lip from a girlfriend and the death of his cat, clearly a result of his neglect.Writer director Ryan Fleck is also not familiar with the effects of smoking crack and snorting cocaine. One of the primary effects of these drugs is paranoia and we see none of this in Dan...he gets high and then likes to get in people's faces instead the isolation that usually occurs with coke addicts. His complete indifference to Dray delivering drugs to his hotel room was also disturbing, which was the just the surface of Dray's issues, but Dan doesn't really attempt to do the right things to help her.The mixed messages and bad behavior glamorized here notwithstanding, Gosling gives a mesmerizing performance that earned him an Oscar nomination and is matched note for note by Epps, who should have received a nomination as well. The shoestring budget on which this indie was clearly shot does add to the realism, but our hero doesn't really change or learn anything and because of this, the film, though watchable, left a bad taste in my mouth.

"Half Nelson" is a 2006 independent film starring Ryan Gosling as Mr. Dunne, a white school teacher in an inner-city Brooklyn middle school. Mr. Dunne has noble ambitions of being a positive force in the lives of his students but he's bogged down by a crack habit. He strikes up a much-needed friendship with one of his students, a latchkey 13 year-old black girl named Drey, who accidentally discovers his drug problem.Richard Roeper and Kevin Smith's review on At The Movies called "Half Nelson" a masterpiece that everyone should seek out, view and relish; unfortunately it's not even close to being that good.Yes, the acting is great across the board, especially Gosling, but acting itself does not a movie make. What's wrong with this film? For one thing, the story plays out in a dreary monotone its entire length (106 minutes) and ends on an unresolved note. Yet, even this doesn't explain why the film fails to be truly good or great; after all, 2004's "The Woodsman" also plays out in a flat, realistic manner and ends somewhat unresolved, but that film is great. So where does "Half Nelson" go wrong? Although Ryan Gosling is an excellent actor, his character in this film, Mr. Dunne, is lifeless, unlikable, hypocritical and unrepentant; by contrast, Keven Bacon in "The Woodsman" may be lifeless and unlikable, but at least he wasn't hypocritical or unrepentant.By "lifeless and unlikable" I mean that he lacks vibrancy and inspiration, even when he's in his glory teaching his kids about dialectics & history. There's simply no charisma that would compel anyone to want to seek him out, learn from him or befriend him, like, say, Robin Williams' character in "Dead Poets Society." By "hypocritical" I mean the obvious: How much of a positive impact could he possibly have on inner-city youths if he himself is addicted to drugs? This brings to mind the absurd scene where Mr. Dunne confronts a drug dealer who's using Drey as a drug deliverer. Dunne doesn't want Drey to be negatively influenced by a drug dealer but it's okay for her to hang out with a pathetic drug addict like himself (?). The scene ends with Dunne having a drink and "candy" with the drug dealer -- lot of good that confrontation did.By "unrepentant" I mean there's no indication in the story that Dunne desires to or will ultimately choose to detox from his drug habit. He makes the statement that "rehab doesn't work." Okay, that's fine, but do SOMETHING to try to escape your drug problem! There are other problems with the film: The camera bobbles around too much as if to draw attention to itself ("See, this is a realistic slice-of-life picture!") It smacks of pretension.The kids in the classroom seem too well-behaved. This is a problem in Anywhere, America, let alone the inner-city.Despite Mr. Dunne's monotone dreariness, the viewer does desire to see him escape his addiction and fulfill his noble ambitions. We also come to care about Drey -- will she acquire the wisdom to stay away from drugs (dealing or addiction) and prison or will she too become part of the problem? Unfortunately the film leaves everything up in the air. We don't even know if Dunne still has his job at the end.I get the points the film is trying to make -- this is an anti-inspirational teacher/mentor movie. There's no by-the-numbers breakthrough for student or teacher. "Half Nelson" isn't concerned with such things; it's concerned with the the simple achievement of going to work every day and accomplishing something beyond oneself, despite a flawed nature and crippling habit. It's a fine point but it could have been done in a much more compelling way.Don't get me wrong, I don't hate "Half Nelson." I did appreciate quite a few aspects of it, especially Dunne's unlikely friendship with a 13 year-old girl, but the story never rises above its flat dreariness to become anything more than okay.GRADE: C