Box office Half Nelson was given a
limited theatrical release, opening in two theatres and peaking with 105 theatres. It grossed $2.7million domestically (United States and Canada), and $2.2million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $4.9million, against a budget of $0.7million.
Critical response On the television show
Ebert & Roeper that aired during the weekend of August 13, 2006,
Richard Roeper and guest critic
Kevin Smith gave
Half Nelson a "two big thumbs up" rating. Smith said that it was probably one of the ten best films he had seen in the last decade. Jim Emerson, editor of
Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film four-stars-out-of-four and called it a masterpiece.
Entertainment Weekly film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum awarded the film with an "A" and stated in her review for the film, "
Half Nelson offers an opportunity to marvel, once again, at the dazzling talent of Ryan Gosling for playing young men as believable as they are psychologically trip-wired."
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."
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." 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."
The Monthly film critic
Luke Davies described the film as "engaging and elegant, unpredictable and non-didactic, a film which comfortably sits with its own ambiguities and even allows them to go largely unresolved," commending the film's fresh take on the occasionally exhausted "teacher with a heart of gold" story, achieved by "one of the [film's] quiet strengths ... that it doesn't try to resolve Dunne's journey of devouring". Davies concluded that the film's optimistic and pessimistic convergence deemed the film "transparent and sparkling and diamond-hard, a small gem."
Paste Magazine named it one of the "50 Best Movies of the Decade" (2000–2009), ranking it at #16.
Music Half Nelson: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released in the United States and Canada on August 8, 2006, by
Lakeshore Records. The Canadian band
Broken Social Scene, featured prominently throughout the film, is also included on the soundtrack. ; Track listing == Accolades ==