Cinema surveillance images are loading at the bottom of the page

Half Nelson - Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie, Ryan Fleck

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is an eighth-grade history teacher in an inner-city school deep in the heart of Brooklyn. He eschews the provided curriculum in favour of off-the-cuff, but deeply heartfelt lectures about the importance of understanding history, rather than just memorizing it. He speaks primarily of dialectics, the tensions between two opposing forces. He is torn between his desire to change the world and his increasingly desperate realization that he can't, at least not in the grand, awe-inspiring ways that he envisioned as an eager, idealistic college student. He started using drugs as a way to escape the pain of life, and it has turned into a crutch that bears increasingly heavy loads of psychological weight. In his classroom, which is populated almost entirely by black and Hispanic students, Dan lectures about how the world is structured into opposing forces, illustrating it at one point by arm-wrestling one of his students. His unorthodox approach inspires them during class, but interestingly enough we don't see its effects outside the classroom. Half Nelson focuses on Dan and his relationship with Drey (Shareeka Epps), a 13-year-old student of his who catches him in the bathroom smoking crack after school one day. Drey understands Dan's frustrations with life; she is the child of an overworked single mother whom she barely sees, and spending so much time on her own has made her self-reliant, but also hard on the edges.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Half Nelson theatrical one sheet imageHalf Nelson theatrical one sheet image

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

  • Film drama teacher student history drugs crack high school

Persons of interest

  • Ryan Gosling .... Dan Dunne
  • Shareeka Epps .... Drey
  • Anthony Mackie .... Frank
  • Monique Curnen .... Isabel
  • Karen Chilton .... Karen
  • Tina Holmes .... Rachel
  • Collins Pennie .... Mike
  • Deborah Rush .... Jo Dunne
  • Jay O Sanders .... Russ Dunne
  • Bryce Silver .... Bernard
  • Sebastian Sozzi .... Javier
  • Nicole Vicius .... Cindy
  • Tristan Wilds .... Jamal
  • Stephanie Bast .... Vanessa
  • Nathan Corbett .... Terrence
  • Thaddeus Daniels .... Referee
  • Deidre Goodwin .... Tina
  • Christopher Williamson .... Charles
  • Anna Boden .... Screenwriter
  • Ryan Fleck .... Screenwriter
  • Ryan Fleck .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Talk about heavy! Half Nelson is a hard-core inner-city drug-fuelled drama, like A guide to recognizing your saints but with narrative tension. It's also a, surprisingly, more intensely personal film, perhaps because Ryan Gosling is the superior actor. The script is better, too, and there's a greater sense of danger because you never know who's going to survive.

The drama movie Half Nelson is directed by Ryan Fleck and stars Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie.

Government security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Strong drug use and themes)

Surveillance time

106 minutes (1:46 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

Film: 25 April 2007

Cinema surveillance images

Half Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie imageHalf Nelson movie image

[ Top of the page ]