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SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE
Director: Scott Cooper Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, David Krumholtz, Gaby Hoffman, Harrison Sloan Gilbertson, Grace Gummer, Marc Maron MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:00 Release Date: 10/24/25 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 24, 2025 One could look at Bruce Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska as an attempt at self-sabotage, and that's one thought somewhat put forth in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Writer/director Scott Cooper's movie almost puts forward a lot of ideas about Springsteen, his music, the way he is or isn't adjusting to newfound fame, and his long struggles with depression. Ultimately, the story here is mostly about the feeling that everything is closing in around the man, as a few other characters explain to him and each other that he is feeling that way. This is basically to say that Cooper, adapting the book by Warren Zanes, is attempting to do something different with the traditional musical biography, but the filmmaker doesn't fully trust that he can or should stray too far from the comfort of formula. Characters here exist to provide exposition and context for an audience that might be out of the loop. There are montages of songwriting and flashbacks that explain from where in the artist's life the lyrics are coming. People debate the creative and commercial necessities of the music industry, and an actor gets to show off just how well he has perfected an imitation of the real-life person he's playing. Jeremy Allen White plays the movie's Bruce, and he sounds eerily like Springsteen in those recording sessions in a rented house near a New Jersey lake and in the studio, when he and the E Street Band put down "Born in U.S.A." for rock immortality. The Nebraska sessions are, perhaps, the more impressive feat of both imitation and interpretation on White's part. After all, the album, as Cooper's screenplay keeps telling us, is so intimate, personal, and haunted that the actor has to tap into something deeper to give the sense that it's the same for him in that moment. Indeed, "haunted" is a fine way to describe those scenes, the movie's most effective and affecting. They come after Bruce, having finished a world tour for to promote his previous album, finds himself on the precipice of real musical stardom and, also, without much to do at the moment. To be clear, everyone, especially his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) and record label president Al Teller (David Krumholtz), has an idea of what Bruce should be doing next. That's to write an album with even more hits than the last one and keep himself in public eye so that no one forgets he's going to be a star. Instead, Bruce holes up in his dimly lit, barely furnished and decorated, and remote house. He lies on the couch, plucks at an acoustic guitar on occasion, and stays up late into the night. While channel surfing, he becomes involved in a film being broadcast and, inspired, starts looking into the notorious murderer Charles Starkweather. From there, he begins writing songs that are anything but radio hits. Something dark and unspoken is driving Bruce in these moments, and Cooper does trust the mood, the suggestions of childhood flashbacks, and his lead actor to complement the music without outright explaining it. In the movie, Bruce himself can't even clarify where these songs come from or what he wants them to say, and the filmmaker believes that of his character, too. We see a young Bruce (played by Matthew Pellicano Jr.) and his father Douglas (Stephen Graham), a quiet man who drinks and gets angry and only knows certain ways to connect with or communicate to his children—or anyone, for that matter. When he lays down "Mansion on the Hill" to an at-home recording machine, Bruce's memory is of his father taking him and his sister to a grand farmhouse, where it's obvious his old man's life hasn't turned out the way he wanted it to. This is compelling, mostly because Cooper implies more than he explains, while there's really no avoiding the fact that, even sung by someone else, Springsteen's songs from that album are so uniquely evocative. The movie's smart to use them as the foundation, especially for this particular story about a man who's coming off the high of a world tour and lingering in the lows of having to face the silence around him but the noise of his mind. Nothing else here reaches the level of those scenes, although Bruce's romantic relationship with single mother Faye (Odessa Young) forces him to be honest about why he keeps people at a distance and runs when things become too emotionally scary. It's insightful enough, and as the gradually spurned lover, Young plays the role with enough strength and wisdom keep the character from becoming a cliché or a plot device. That mainly leaves the scenes in the studio and of the business side of the music, which feel as if they've pulled from a different version of this material. Jon tries to convince Bruce to record some hits and, then, has to argue with Al about the album the company is actually getting. There's a lot more Jon in this story than one expect, but that's because someone, apparently, needs to explain Bruce's mindset in direct terms. About half of Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere seems to be attempting something distinct—much in the spirit of the album at the heart of this story. The rest of the movie, though, is far too conventional for that difference to really matter. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for thematic material, some sexuality, strong language, and smoking)
