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100Superb drama from New York-based filmmakers Ryan Flek and Anna Boden.
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100Half Nelson offers an opportunity to marvel, once again, at the dazzling talent of Ryan Gosling for playing young men as believable as they are psychologically trip-wired.
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100What is different about Half Nelson is the execution, the kind of subtlety in writing, directing and acting (by costars Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie as well as Gosling) you seldom see.
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100A dedicated, charismatic, crack-addicted history teacher is the most believable protagonist in an American movie this year.
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91The movie lives in its small details.
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91Gosling excels at playing contradictory characters like this one, having kick-started his career as a Jewish neo-Nazi in "The Believer," but here, his inner turmoil rarely gets vocalized. It's a remarkably subtle performance.
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90At a time when most American movies, studio made or "independent," seem ever more divorced from anything approximating actual life experience, Half Nelson is so sobering and searingly truthful that watching it feels like being tossed from a calm beach into a raging current.
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The audacity of making an inner-city drama in which the white-male authority figure is the crackhead finds its equal in Gosling's already legendary performance, a high-wire act that's gutsiest for its unconscionable charm.
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90What makes Half Nelson both an unusual and an exceptional American film, particularly at a time when even films about Sept. 11 are professed to have no politics, is its insistence on political consciousness as a moral imperative.
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88No halves about it: Half Nelson is a wholly absorbing and delicately shaded portrait of an educator played by Ryan Gosling, a young man harboring an offstage secret.
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88A compelling drama that establishes Ryan Gosling as one of the finest actors of his generation.
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88Gosling may be the soul of Half Nelson, but Epps is the film's heart.
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83Best where it counts the most - in its recognition of how difficult it will be for Dan and Drey to turn their lives around.
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83Gosling, who was amazing in "The Believer" but hasn't yet connected substantially with a big audience, continues to impress.
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Just in time for back-to-school, this smart film about a troubled teacher and student upends most movie images, both romantic and negatively stereotyped, of the urban classroom.
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If there was ever any doubt, with Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling establishes himself as a major talent and one of the finest young actors around.
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80Fleck manages to mix the storylines which include drug abuse, political commentary and making good choices about your life's path flawlessly.
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80Just wonderful with its offbeat but wholly credible storyline, down-to-earth style and exceptionally fine performances.
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80It's a complex and defiant fable of American life run just slightly off the rails, delivering all the impact of "Crash" without the phony-baloney paradoxes or brick-in-the-face message delivery.
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Downbeat as it is, Half Nelson is a genuinely inspirational film--a terrifically compelling character study and a tricky exploration of the links (and busted links) between the personal and the political.
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80It keeps surprising us, mainly by being consistently smarter and sadder than inspirational-teacher movies usually let themselves be.
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80Avoiding rote inspirational notes as well as boyz-in-the-hood violence, scrupulously low-key drama nonetheless builds to a powerful impact.
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80Nearly every scene rings with its own ragged truth, which becomes increasingly painful as Dan's addiction becomes more unmanageable and as he refuses to confront the untenable politics of his own behavior.
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78Half Nelson, with its bleakly hopeful view of humanity both damned and redeemed – simultaneously – is uncomfortably, almost exactly right.
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75It is not easy to watch, yet beyond the traps that society and the urban culture have set up for Drey and the other kids, and the traps that Dan is falling into on his own, this is ultimately a hopeful story of common humanity.
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75It's a performance that will make you cringe - with despair, with empathy - as Gosling's Dan takes one self-destructive step after another.
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75You never catch Gosling doing anything out of character. It's the first Oscar-caliber performance I've seen so far this year.
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75Nelson works largely because Gosling and Epps work flawlessly together.
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75This is a grown-up film that puts liberalism under the microscope and finds it tired -- not a dirty word, as neo-cons believe, and not a panacea, as sentimentalists wish, but just tired and longing for rejuvenation.
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75The movie is not credible, even in an inner-city setting. At the same time, it's touching.
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Too bad there is only about half an hour's worth of story here. Mostly, we just watch the teacher get high, and his classroom talks about civil rights are nothing but filler.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 54 out of 73
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Mixed: 6 out of 73
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Negative: 13 out of 73
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TyP10In my top 5 movies of all time. Captures a lifestyle in an subtle, accurate, and painful piece of art.
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