Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere review – is the biopic worth a cinema trip?

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A star rating of 3 out of 5.

Right at the beginning of the story, the main character is buying a car when the salesperson casually mentions, “I know who you are.”

Bruce Springsteen examined the cassette player in a small, stylish car and, with a shrug, commented, “Looks like someone else is still using these!”

The conversation feels forced and overly clever, needlessly pointing out that the show is about a famous musician grappling with personal issues. It’s one instance of dialogue that isn’t quite strong enough and risks disrupting an otherwise well-made series.

This situation feels familiar – we saw something similar less than a year ago with the film *A Complete Unknown*, where Timothée Chalamet played Bob Dylan also grappling with a period of creative uncertainty.

Bob and Bruce both represent their eras, so it’s natural that people who enjoy either artist will compare their work and look for similarities and differences.

Interestingly, the first film draws inspiration from the events surrounding Bob Dylan’s controversial switch to electric guitar, while the Springsteen movie focuses on him essentially doing the reverse – moving away from electric instruments.

The film opens with a scene of Jeremy Allen White portraying Bruce Springsteen, visibly exhausted and sweating after performing the final song of a long concert tour. This tour was for Springsteen’s 1980 album, *The River*, which was his first album to top the charts in the US and ultimately sold seven million copies around the world, establishing him as a global star.

Despite his growing success, he’s feeling overwhelmed by the attention. He’s starting to crave a simpler life – one where he can shed the extravagance and return to making music in a more basic way, perhaps by recording on an old tape machine in a quiet, rustic cottage in New Jersey.

Essentially, that’s the main idea behind Warren Zanes’s highly praised book, which details the creation of Bruce Springsteen’s understated and raw album, *Nebraska*.

The film follows Bruce Springsteen, but not as a famous performer. Instead, it offers a moving look at his personal journey of self-discovery, and how songwriting serves as a way for him to work through his feelings.

This role mostly asks White to play a thoughtful, private character – a stark contrast to Bruce’s flamboyant stage presence – and to deal with lingering problems from his history.

A tough and often abusive relationship with his father (played powerfully by Stephen Graham in stark black and white flashbacks) strongly shapes Bruce’s memories. He gradually realizes that his new songs are actually about his own life, and we see him rewrite lyrics to reflect this, changing them from stories about ‘someone’ to stories about ‘himself’.

Jack White often appears in photos gazing off into the distance. Some feel this look, combined with his youthful appearance, doesn’t quite match the image of a mature man grappling with personal struggles and having trouble explaining his new artistic ideas.

Bruce’s potential romance with a single mother (Odessa Young) feels like a side story that doesn’t really add to the main plot, and his early interactions with his manager and mentor, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), are surprisingly bland.

Bruce Springsteen’s success is largely due to Landau, but initially, Landau seemed to act as a practical go-between for Springsteen and the record label, who were eager for hit songs. He explained things in such a basic way, it was almost as if he was constantly giving simple, public announcements.

Fortunately, the film gives Strong more substantial material to work with as it goes on. Director Scott Cooper skillfully builds a strong connection between the two characters, and the actors convincingly portray a genuine and tender relationship.

As a movie buff, I’ve always noticed how Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting feels *made* for the screen. Way back in ’73, “Rosalita” instantly brought *West Side Story* to my mind with its story of love and clashing cultures. And even more recently, his *Western Stars* album really captured that same fading, small-town America vibe you see in Peter Bogdanovich’s *The Last Picture Show*. It’s clear Cooper’s script draws a lot of inspiration from those cinematic touchstones – it feels like Springsteen’s stories and those movies are all connected.

I love how Alexander Payne subtly layers things in *Nebraska*. There’s this moment where Woody Grant is flipping channels and they show a bit of *Badlands*. But it’s more than just a movie within a movie – it flashes back to a young Bruce Springsteen with his dad, watching *The Night of the Hunter*. And get this – *The Night of the Hunter* is all about a scary, dangerous father figure! It’s a really clever little detail that hints at the complicated relationship between Woody and his son, and it’s just the kind of thing I pick up on when I’m really paying attention to a film.

Even brief moments contribute to the film’s closeness and help us understand what the subject is thinking. These scenes are far more effective than those featuring the E Street Band, which highlight White’s lack of the same commanding stage presence as Springsteen.

Deliver Me From Nowhere is most effective when it keeps a tight focus on a man in his thirties grappling with personal struggles while pouring his energy into making a now-famous album, using music as both an escape and a source of comfort.

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2025-10-20 14:06