The story concerns an inner city middle-school teacher who forms a friendship with a student, after she discovers that he has a drug habit.

Dan Dunne is a young middle-school history teacher at a Brooklyn school, with a teaching style that rejects the standard curriculum in favor of an approach based upon dialectics.

Drey's family consists of her overworked single-mother and her brother, Mike, who is in prison for selling drugs for a neighborhood dealer, Frank.

Dan's brother's girlfriend, Cindy, catches him freebasing in the garage; the two converse and she tells him a joke which makes him laugh.

The website's consensus reads: "Half Nelson features powerful performances from Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps.

"[4] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

"[8] LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas wrote, "At a time when most American movies, studio made or 'independent,' seem ever more divorced from anything approximating actual life experience, Half Nelson is so sobering and searingly truthful that watching it feels like being tossed from a calm beach into a raging current.

"[9] Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan gave the film an enthusiastic response, stating in his review, "What is different about Half Nelson is the execution, the kind of subtlety in writing, directing and acting (by costars Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie as well as Gosling) you seldom see.

"[10] Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote that "a dedicated, charismatic, crack-addicted history teacher is the most believable protagonist in an American movie this year.

[13] Half Nelson: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released in the United States and Canada on August 8, 2006, by Lakeshore Records.

[15] Bonus features include outtakes, deleted scenes, filmmaker commentary, and a music video by Rhymefest.