In portraying a caring, unorthodox, in many ways effective inner-city high school history teacher with a drug problem, Ryan Gosling does about as good a job of acting as anyone I've seen in a long time. He completely sold that character to me.

Gosling played a very different character as the male lead in the film adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks love story, The Notebook.

The edginess of his role and the movie remind me somewhat of Edward Norton (another actor I like) and the provocative 1998 film "American History X" in which he stars.

As an aside, one of the deleted scenes has his character remarking, in his characteristic offhanded way, to a group of neighborhood guys playing cards that he is feeling "hotter than George Bush on Judgment Day" (if memory serves).

Am interested, of course, in reactions of those who've seen it...