"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."