Starring: Ryan Gosling, Jeff Lima, Shareeka Epps, Nathan Corbett, Tyra Kwao-Vovo Directed By: Ryan Fleck Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Sony Pictures Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 99 Release Date: February 13, 2007 Running Time: 107 minutes Theatrical Release Date: August 11, 2006
Product Description: Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is a young inner-city junior high school teacher whose ideals wither and die in the face of reality. Day after day in his shabby Brooklyn classroom he somehow finds the energy to inspire his 13 and 14-year-olds to examine everything from civil rights to the Civil War with a new enthusiasm. Rejecting the standard curriculum in favor of an edgier approach Dan teaches his students how change works ' on both a historical and personal scale ' and how to think for themselves.Though Dan is brilliant dynamic and in control in the classroom he spends his time outside school on the edge of consciousness. His disappointments and disillusionment have led to a serious drug habit. He juggles his hangovers and his homework keeping his lives separated until one of his troubled students Drey (Shareeka Epps) catches him getting high after school.From this awkward beginning Dan and Drey stumble into an unexpected friendship. Despite the differences in their ages and situations they are both at an important intersection. Depending on which way they turn ' and which choices they make ' their lives will change.System Requirements:Run Time: 107 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396178595 Manufacturer No: 17859
Amazon.com:
Sometimes people are attracted to each other because of their differences. When there's a nebulous attraction between a teacher and a young teenage child--as in the superb Half Nelson--the relationship has all the makings of confused disaster. Though there are a few uncomfortable moments when it's not obvious whether Dan (Ryan Gosling) and Drey (Shareeka Epps) might cross the line, the attraction between the pair is culled less from sexual tension than desperation. Dan is an idealistic history teacher in an inner-city school. Drey is one of his brightest students. For both, drugs represent something that may help them escape their worlds. He takes drugs to dull his dissatisfaction with himself. She views drugs as a possible way to better her life, even though she knows her brother's foray into that trade landed him in jail. Bleakly filmed and well told, Half Nelson soars because of the immaculate acting by Gosling and Epps. With his impish smile, Gosling provides a character that is at once disarming, alluring, and pitiful. As the young girl who's already seen too much hardship in her life, Epps plays her part with just the right amount of hardened raw emotion. While the ambiguous ending may not please fans weaned on happy Hollywood finales, it's a fitting and believable close to a thought-provoking film. --Jae-Ha Kim
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Half Nelson Painfully Truthful Half Nelson is one of those movies that's so courageously truthful that at times it's hard to keep your eyes on the screen. After the end credits rolled I shuffled out of the theatre still feeling its impact - and then carried it around with me all day.
not exactly goodbye mr chips A sad story of a man teacher on a spiral down who finds a very unlikely friend. We begin to think drugs have this fellow in a full Nelson, but there is some redemption in the twinkie defense... The cheater who sits behind also steals Drey bike, but she finds it and gets it back. We don't know if things will get better, but we have some hope.
Turned it off after a half-hour My husband and I are in our 40s and not hard of hearing, but we couldn't understand a word that Shareeka Epps said. The rest of the movie seemed to be nothing more then Ryan Gosling getting wasted, trying to sleep it off, and dragging through the rest of his workday. Talk about overrated!
Just so so This was interesting since I too am a teacher, but I sure don't smoke crack all night long. Ryan Gosling is up for Actor in a Leading role, and I am afraid to say that his nomination may be his reward. This isn't because I don't want him to win, because he was good. The best I've ever seen him, but he's up against DiCaprio and Whitaker (and a few others who won't win.)
Gosling plays David Dunne a crack smoking history teacher/basketball coach who wants to write a children's book on dialectics, but instead he smokes too much crack and tries to screw a colleague. His ex is getting married and his parents wish he'd visit more often.
His beard bothered me, since it was all scraggily until the end. Shareeka Epps, his student, befriends him, and she does a fine job. This is her second role, a role she reprised from the short film of the same story line she did two years ago. She has a chance to be good, and she shows it in an understated muted role in this film where she attempts to juggle education and drug dealing on the inner city streets.
This film was good, but I felt it was slow. Forty-five minutes in felt like an hour fifteen. Early in the film Gosling tells another character that he's a teacher to touch just one life. To change just one person, but it's his character who needs touched, needs to be saved, and, by the end, Epps does just that. Nice ending.
Painful and beautiful all at the same time I am sort of a Ryan Gosling fan but I had not gotten around to seeing Half Nelson for some reason. I think that I am often reticent to watch movies that are so dark because they can effect me more than I would like.
I am, however, glad that I was able to get over that and watch this film. It was rough. I have never had the urge to do cocaine or smoke crack but this movie would have killed even the slightest curiosity for me. After watching this, I realized that drugs are glamorized more than I had been aware of because few movies were as uncomfortable to watch as this one. Candy might be the only other one that comes to mind right now and even there the love story softened some of the hard edges that were left all over Half Nelson.
In addition to the discomfort imparted by Dan's drug use, there was an uneasiness I felt about his relationship with Drey. The tension was perfectly done. The possibility of the friendship between them becoming something unacceptably inappropriate was an undercurrent that kept it from feeling saccharine. This was my favorite aspect of this film and I think that both Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps did a fantastic job at maintaining that tension.
The movie had some really funny moments, too, which I appreciated. I think that Ryan Gosling was just amazing. He managed to do some pretty despicable things and be a pretty pathetic character without alienating the audience. When he does something positive, he is so conflicted that it seems believable and genuine.
Really, just a great film. I think that Gosling creates Dan and gives him life and the rest of the cast of the film create the world that he lives in very convincingly.
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