My initial resistant thinking that this would be another white man saving the Black and Hispanic children was quickly obliterated. Half Nelson is just the opposite and quite incredible. The main characters are not what one would think, each having idiosyncrasies that make them different than the usual White savior, Black drug dealer, and minority teen so often seen on the screen.

The most stable person in Half Nelson is thirteen-year-old Drey (Shareeka) whose major problems stem from being caught in the midst of all the grown-ups’ disastrous lives. Dan Dunne (Ryan) snorts and smokes anything he can find and clings to his eighth-grade inner-city students because the rest of his life, including his own alcoholic parents, is garbage. Frank (Anthony) is the friendly neighborhood drug dealer who is always ready to sell a little happiness and throw in a couple of pieces of peppermint for free, literally. The latter wants to keep Drey near while he deals with guilt over her brother’s current imprisonment and tries to figure out if he has a potential drug runner in the making. After all, according to him, “It’s better than flipping burgers…for $150 a week”.

Meanwhile, Drey’s mom is pulling double shifts as an EMT and wondering why she can’t get the absentee father to at least pick up his daughter after basketball practice. But, there’s no need for that because both Frank and Dan are always very willing to give the introspective, precocious teen a ride home. Dan tries to keep Drey away from drugs and Frank but fails to set a very good example of clean living. When Drey finds Dan on the floor of the girl’s locker room after a bad freebasing incident their relationship deepens significantly.

Ryan Gosling and Anthony Mackie give powerful portrayals of two sides of the same ugly coin. One man is sinking further into the realization of his possible hopelessness and the other uses that same despair in those around him to build up his own power. Young Shareeka Epps is equally moving as she fights to understand and perhaps save all involved. Half Nelson, directed by Ryan Fleck, can make one a bit uncomfortable as it brings close the truths about the imperfections that exist in our individual worlds: worlds that we continue to try to shape into little utopias. This rarely works out exactly as planned. And so goes this film - there is no happy ending nor is there a particularly tragic one. There is, however, a sprinkling of hope just as all fades to black.