Film Review: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Director: Scott Cooper
Gotham Group, Night Exterior, Bluegrass Films, 20th Century Studios
In Theaters: 10.24.2025

As a young Bruce Springsteen buys his first new car following the success of his first Top 10 song, “Hungry Heart,” the car dealer calls him a rock star and smiles. “That’s right. I know who you are,” he says. “That makes one of us,” Bruce coolly replies. It’s a memorable and pithy line, and it also sums up the haunted soul of The Boss, and the underlying story of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.

In 1981, after conquering arenas across America, Bruce Springsteen finds himself at a crossroads between fame and solitude. His manager, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, Succession, The Apprentice), hides him away in a rented house near his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey — a retreat meant to quiet the roar of the crowd. But there are echoes in the silence. In nearby Colt’s Neck, Bruce reconnects with his roots and plays some gigs on the barroom stages of The Stone Pony, where he meets Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a single mother who stirs something gentle in the restless rocker’s hungry heart. Yet ghosts linger: a fraught bond with his father, Douglas, and the memories that shaped a working-class spirit that he feels guilt ridden for leaving behind. Armed with a four-track recorder and with the help of a talented sound engineer, Mike Batlan (Paul Walter Hauser, Richard Jewell, Black Bird), Bruce turns his bedroom into a studio and his past into poetry. Rejecting the polish of fame, he crafts Nebraska — a haunting, unfiltered, raw work of art that could be a genuine masterpiece, if the tortured visionary’s obsession doesn’t drive him over the edge and take his rising stardom with it.

The first choice that Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere gets right is to focus its story on an era and the creation of a pivotal work, rather than being a biopic, though it does feature frequent flashbacks to the artist’s childhood. The difference between these flashbacks and mere plot exposition is that they are integral to the story of Springsteen’s battle with severe depression and processing trauma. It may sound callous, but while I have great sympathy for anyone battling addiction, we’ve all seen plenty of music biopics about self-destruction and falling into substance abuse. Mental health issues, and the ways that depression and the artistic process affect each other, however, is a different story, and screenwriter-director Scott Cooper approaches the subject with subtlety and sensitivity. The boldest choice that sets the film apart from so many others in the genre is that it puts more time into the quiet, thoughtful moments of artistic creation than on fitting in as many can’t-miss sequences that showcase energetic performances of classic songs. While this results in a movie that isn’t going to get the same kind of repeat viewing mileage as A Complete Unknown or Bohemian Rhapsody, it makes for a daring and in-depth portrait of the artistic process and a more intimate understanding of the artist himself.

Jeremy Allen White is stunning as Springsteen, embodying the everyman inside the legend without getting lost in self conscious gimmicks, focusing on characterization without impersonation. While the actor gets enough moments to show that he can sing, it’s never about trying to channel The Boss’s physical voice, but rather to explore the singular inner voice inside that drives his soulful perfection. The other standout performance comes from the great Stephen Graham, the recent multiple Emmy winner for Adolescence, as Douglas “Dutch” Springsteen, Bruce’s temperamental father who also suffered from severe depression that led to alcoholism. Cooper chooses to try to avoid vilifying or idolizing Dutch, simply letting us see him entirely from his son’s point of view, and it effectively captures the confusing feeling of truly loving someone you don’t necessarily like. Young is a very talented actress, and she does great work with a somewhat under-developed character, and Strong does superb supporting work that lifts the film, even if he never gets the chance to really show off the depth of his dramatic chops.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, like its protagonist’s vision and voice, is fighting not to be drowned out by background noise, and it’s losing that battle at the box office, which is threatening its chances as a major awards contender. That’s a shame, but the reason to see this film is not its success with audiences or critics. It’s a compelling and touching film for anyone who has ever tried to channel any kind of pain into art or any form of self-expression, and if you take the time to listen and let it in, there’s a lot to be said for it. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews from Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Blue Moon
Film Review: Frankenstein