Half Nelson

Half Nelson was critically beloved. It received a 91% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 85% on Metacritic. It inspired critics to describe it with phrases like: "genuinely inspirational," "dramatically absorbing," and "tight direction." It even got a bit of love from the Academy, in the form of a best actor nomination for Ryan Gosling.

Yet, I was underwhelmed.

Half Nelson tells the story of Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling), an inner-city junior high school history teacher who just happens to be addicted to crack. He's an excellent teacher by all accounts--beloved by his students--he just has that one unfortunate habit. As fate would have it, one of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), catches him in the act (in the girls' locker room). Before you know it, the two have molded a chocolate and vanilla friendship around the nougat core of their shared secret.

The friendship leads Dunne to act in some questionable ways. Some are good-hearted, if a bit hypocritical, like pleading with Drey to stay away from an older drug dealer friend of hers. Others are weird and inappropriate, like getting a bit jiggy with her during a school dance. The tenuous relationship continues until the climactic moment when Drey, doing some drug runs for her dealer friend, comes upon Dunne in the midst of a crazy party.

And at the end--spoiler alert?--Dunne seems to have cleaned up his act.

The movie is shot in a very, very understated style. The kind where none of the dialogue is highlighted; it just feels like you're watching the whole movie through security camera footage. This kinda works and kinda doesn't. It gives the movie a "this is an everyday happening" feel, but it also makes it a tad boring.

My bigger beef was with the totally ad hoc redemption at the end. One of the strengths of the movie is that it doesn't fall into the typical arc of someone's drug abuse falling further and further out of control until said person hits rock bottom and cleans up. With Dunne, it's clearly more just a hard-to-break habit. But that makes the final scene utterly bewildering. Let me set it up for you... (SPOILER ALERT)

With no real lead-in, we see Drey and Dunne in Dunne's apartment. The apartment is cleaned up and Dunne has shaved. No words are spoken. Roll credits.

Clearly, the movie wanted to suggest that he had decided to get his life in order at the end. But the last scene felt like it came totally out of left field. The filmmakers knew it had to be there, so they just decided to lump it on at the end.

And, as you might imagine, that sort of ending leaves you, the audience member, with a very distinct feeling of "WTF?"

Which is a bit of a shame, because the movie isn't really that bad. It's not great, but it's not bad. It's a compelling enough story, even if told in a deliberately uncompelling way. And Ryan Gosling did well in his role, though not nearly as well as everyone else seems to think. Shareeka Epps was just as good.

So, where does Half Nelson fall, numerically? The story is a 10, the direction is a -2, and the WTF? ending is a -7. I'll throw one point back on for the solid performances, and the end result is a two.

Also, as a bit of a p.s., the English subtitles on this DVD were absolute crap. Not only were letters capitalized randomly, but certain lines would flash on the screen for about a tenth of a second, allowing you to read almost one full word. All in all, a very frustrating experience.