Half Nelson

...sidestep the clichés of the white-teacher-who-spreads-knowledge-in-an-inner-city-school sub-genre and the drearier aspects of the drug dependency drama, creating an original work that is moving, not without humour...

...der portrætteres hjertevarme og karakterdybde i en på overfladen kold historie...

Everything that makes this movie so terrific is right there in that scene, in the interplay between these two characters -- and these two actors.

Gosling excels at playing contradictory characters like this one...

'Half Nelson', with its bleakly hopeful view of humanity both damned and redeemed – simultaneously – is uncomfortably, almost exactly right.