Half Nelson

A dedicated, charismatic, crack-addicted history teacher is the most believable protagonist in an American movie this year.

Gosling 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.

Gosling may be the soul of Half Nelson, but Epps is the film's heart.

Just wonderful with its offbeat but wholly credible storyline, down-to-earth style and exceptionally fine performances.

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.

It's a performance that will make you cringe - with despair, with empathy - as Gosling's Dan takes one self-destructive step after another.

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.

A fantastic movie that has the patience to let the characters develop from beginning to end. The start of the movie is Ryan Gosling. An Oscar should be store for him after this superb performance.

I like the concept of this film - somewhat of a role reversal, with the white teacher being in a not great lifestyle situation and looking to the students he teaches, from the projects, to not give away his secret or even for help or motivation, to an extent (rather than it being the blonde white bombshell coming in to teach the inner city kids out of poverty or whatever). Ryan Reynolds gives a fairly decent performance and it seems pretty believable, even if there are some plot holes. It doesn't entirely work but its a pretty good attempt at an interesting story. There's some fairly shaky camerawork at times that might irritate you a bit and its not perfect but its ok, so I'd maybe cautiously recommend this film, yes.

Half Baked. Ryan Gosling is absolutely incredible in his role, as is the young lady who stars alongside him, but the story often feels very rote, and there's not much resolution to really satisfy the viewer.

Another clichÃ-ridden generic drug-related high school movie. The only positive is Gosling's acting, if only the script was worthy of his casting....

A bland soup of smug. As edgy as a satsuma and embarrassingly reverent. Half Nelson flogs a dead horse into a cliche paste. Ryan Gosling smoulders vacantly, as he is wont to do.