If you are looking for a review from a critic who is not into Bruce Springsteen and came to this music biopic like a blank slate, stick around otherwise consider yourself warned if you continue reading. “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” (2025) adapts Warren Zanes’ book, “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” which depicts the events that brought Springsteen’s “Nebraska” to life. Like The Boss, writer and director Scott Cooper makes a film for him that mimics the 1982 album in the way that he technically makes a movie about Springsteen, but unlike the record, not necessarily the movie that anyone wants or needs. Those that love it are satisfied with anything remotely related to the singer, songwriter and guitar player. Unfortunately, Cooper dances around the meat of the story, which is not a story about a man grappling with his abusive childhood, but a man who suffers from depression, a word never uttered or given sufficient attention to distinguish Springsteen’s artistic struggles from the average demanding male artist whose every whim must be satisfied.
If not for his ability to sweat, Jeremy Allen White would never disappear as Springsteen, and when he does, it is not for long. He does all the singing, which is fine, but if you are making a movie about someone known for their music, how about playing their music with the original vocals. At least, then, regardless of the quality of the film, you have two hours of listening to your favorite songs in the dark with no interruptions. In the name of Amy Winehouse, when will filmmakers learn. Human beings cannot live on great acting alone when it comes to a music biopic. “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” always feels like a movie, especially since it is so difficult to make a movie about a thought process. Prepare to see a lot of writing with thick black ink, almost like a marker, on notepads. The action gets punctuated with black and white flashbacks of an eight-year-old Bruce (Matthew Anthony Pellicano) horrifically parentified into becoming the caretaker for his alcoholic and abusive dad, Douglas (Stephen Graham). It is a typical story until late in the film when more context is sparingly offered, and Cooper decides to get artsy fartsy in the eleventh hour.
Douglas was self-medicating. Cooper’s coyness and reluctance to face mental health head on is aggravating and begs the question of why make a movie about mental health issues if Cooper is unwilling to at least meet the same level of awareness that the icon had at that time. It would elevate the movie from the standard issue bad dad trope. I would be really interested to hear what critics who suffer from depression feel about this portrayal. (I Freudian slipped and initially typed betrayal.) If it was not for the end intertitles, would someone with depression even recognize similarities? Gaby Hoffman, who is only nine years older than White, plays his mom, and when her character is still using Springsteen to wrangle her husband when he is on another coast, without that backstory to explain everyone’s Herculean tolerance of this man, it sends the unintended wrong message. Under any other circumstances, this dynamic is a DTMFA situation, but as a model of understanding that people need to treat depression like cancer, with patience and love, it could have worked. Still kids are not appropriate caretakers regardless of the circumstance.
The majority of “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is devoted to Springsteen turning his rental bedroom into a DIY recording studio thanks to Mikey, aka Mike Batlan (Paul Walter Hauser, who always makes everything better), romancing a local waitress/single mom, Faye Romano (Odessa Young, who was brilliant in “My First Film,” was underutilized in a thankless chump role), and tooling around with his pal and driver, Matt Delia (Harrison Gilbertson who made the part intriguing and definitely left moviegoers wanting more). Whatever Jeremy Strong got paid, he deserved more. Without Strong as Springsteen’s manager and producer, Jon Landau, tying together ridiculous prose dump dialogue and verging on literally reading the phone book, i.e. song titles, with so much earnestness and passion that it is easy to confuse it with something more meaningful, there is no movie. Jon becomes a docent for the audience analyzing everything that is unfolding onscreen instead of, you know, Cooper showing it and making it intelligible. Strong makes Jon seem like a brother, not a guy who is probably managing a ton of artists with Springsteen on the top of the list. It is his lightest, warmest role to date, and it was nice to see him smile for a change.
Strong’s performance is not a good enough reason to see “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.” The movie drags. I thought that an hour passed at the thirty-seven-minute mark. Glaciers move faster. If “I’m On Fire” played for two hours straight, it would have been preferable. Still it captures the rough, lyrical, working-class, small-town comfort of Freehold, New Jersey, the occasional bucolic beauty and peacefulness of Colt Springs, New York and the nocturnal energy of Manhattan. The unifying common space is the diner, and the film is more of a love letter to the ability to have breakfast any time and place, which resonated. I was primed to be teary eyed whenever my hometown was on screen, starting with the CBS Building in Midtown.
Once the focus is off Springsteen and delves into the logistical problems of dealing with production problems, the pace picks up a lot. Every conversation between Jon and Al Teller (David Krumholtz), a Columbia record exec, felt like a gift of pure bliss. If Al is a real person, I want to hear what he thinks of “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” because same, babe, same. When the mastering engineer, Dennis King (Chris Jaymes), is gentle parenting Springsteen, Jon stops him from shifting blame as if Dennis was cursing Springsteen out. Please be honest with yourself. If you did not know the result, told your boss that he cannot record on a crap machine then he got impatient with you when it did not work, Springsteen would be the villain if his first name was not Bruce. Let’s normalize appreciating someone’s dedication to purity and acknowledge that they are completely unreasonable and making everyone around them miserable when they are a guy. It unintentionally had the effect of making Springsteen hateful, which was hopefully not the intended result.
If you are not into the most famous man from New Jersey, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” is not where you should start, and the Boss deserved better. Even if you are a fan of the cast, it is unlikely be enough to make the lemon worth the squeeze. Cooper does some things well but has zero discernment about how to separate the wheat from the chaff to make a solid movie. It is a waste of resources, good ideas and name recognition. If you are going to make a movie about depression, maybe let people know before the credits roll. What a darn shame.
