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If the opening bars of Coolio’s Gangster’s Paradise make you queasy, Mr Holland’s Opus leaves you cold, and you wanted to kick the bucket along with Robert Sean Leonard during Dead Poets’ Society, you’re not alone. The idealistic-teacher flick may not have a proud lineage, but Half Nelson, screening this Saturday night on SBS, is worth checking out for the way it turns the hack Hollywood clichés on their head.

Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) teaches history in a Brooklyn public school. He’s young, he’s down with the kids, and he prefers to drill his eighth graders in theories of dialectics and social change rather than anything on the curriculum. He’s also a crack addict. When 13-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps) finds him hiding in the gym bathroom, vial in hand, they begin a friendship of sorts. Dan wants to rescue her from the clutches of her neighbourhood drug dealer, but his own downward spiral soon blurs the line between their worlds.

Made by 20-something film grads Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden in 23 days, Half Nelson bears all the hallmarks of the low-budget indie: steadicam, improvised dialogue, liberal politics and a soundtrack by hipster darlings Broken Social Scene. The pair set Dan’s own struggles against a wider backdrop of grassroots civil rights movements in US history, as described straight-to-camera by Dan’s students. It sometimes feels like a very earnest first-year politics thesis — complete with the line, “can one man make a difference?” — but the script is also alive to Dan’s white-boy saviour complex and moral hypocrisy.

Gosling is haunting and heartbreaking and richly deserved his Oscar nod for the role. Epps, a non-trained actor, is also a revelation.

Half Nelson offers no pat ending; no hugging, no learning, no redemption. And no one crying, Oh Captain, My Captain.

The details: Half Nelson is showing at 10pm this Saturday on SBS, after Iron Chef and RocKwiz.