Critic Reviews
85
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
30(97%)
mixed
1(3%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 31 Critic Reviews
100
Half 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.
100
Superb drama from New York-based filmmakers Ryan Flek and Anna Boden.
100
What 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.
100
A dedicated, charismatic, crack-addicted history teacher is the most believable protagonist in an American movie this year.
91
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.
91
The movie lives in its small details.
90
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.
90
What 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.
90
At 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.
88
A compelling drama that establishes Ryan Gosling as one of the finest actors of his generation.
