Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere Review: Jeremy Allen White's Incredible, Haunted Performance Elevates This Biopic

Ask any Bruce Springsteen fan to pick the artist's best album and you're bound to get a variety of answers. But I'm willing to bet the one title that would come up most frequently is "Nebraska," the 1982 record that found the Boss at an introspective crossroads. Before "Nebraska" came 1980's "The River," Springsteen's biggest hit at the time. In 1984, he would release "Born in the U.S.A.," which would turn him into a superstar; a world-beloved rock god who would pack massive stadiums and bring down the house during every show.

But before that there was "Nebraska," a quiet, haunting affair full of echoey songs about losers, drifters, and serial killers. It was not what anyone expected from Springsteen at the time, and that was part of its power. Of course, it certainly helped that the album was brilliant, filled with bleak but beautiful songs populated with memorable characters. They weren't exactly toe-tappers, but they stuck with you.

"Nebraska" has taken on an almost mythological place in Springsteen's discography, and the story of how the singer-songwriter pieced the album together is part of its legend. After coming off the successful The River tour, Springsteen rented a house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and started recording moody songs in the bedroom. These were supposed to be demos that the Boss would then bring to his band to turn into bigger, louder rock hits. But that's not what happened.

Springsteen didn't like the way the songs were turning out with the full band. He preferred the melancholy, low-fi sound he and guitar tech Mike Batlan had come up with in that Colts Neck bedroom. A crazy idea took hold of Springsteen: he would release the songs in their original rough form. It was a bold move and it made more than a few record executives nervous — they wanted hits that could get radio airplay, and that's not what Springsteen had delivered. Hell, he ultimately refused to do press or tour for the album and no singles were released. And yet, "Nebraska" ended up being a hit anyway and has rightly cemented itself as a masterpiece.

The story of making "Nebraska" was chronicled in Warren Zanes' book "Deliver Me from Nowhere" (the title comes from the lyrics of the song "Open All Night"), and now it gets the biopic treatment via Scott Cooper's "Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere" (did we really need "Springsteen" clunkily added to the film's title? Last year's Bob Dylan movie "A Complete Unknown" wasn't called "Dylan: A Complete Unknown," and no one complained). Musician biopics are a frustrating thing, because while they often bring in box office gold they also frequently stick to a rigid, uncreative formula so brilliantly parodied in 2007's "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story."

Cooper is wisely not trying to tell the full life story of the Boss with "Deliver Me from Nowhere," but the film still suffers from a formulaic approach. Thankfully, the filmmaker has Jeremy Allen White on hand to play Springsteen, and the results are stunning. Whatever flaws Cooper's script suffers from, White's take on Bruce is so remarkable that it almost tricks you into thinking this is a great movie. It's not, but it's worth seeing to watch White lay himself bare up on the screen.

"The Bear" actor has already proven he's skilled at playing tortured artists — he has a real gift for silently gazing into the camera with haunted eyes — and here, he's completely believable as a denim-clad New Jersey kid about to make it big. I like Timothée Chalamet as an actor, but I never bought his Bob Dylan as a real person in the aforementioned "A Complete Unknown"; Chalamet's performance felt too much like an impression/impersonation. White wisely avoids that problem, not imitating Springsteen but finding a way to make the part his own. At the same time, White is able to recreate Springsteen's singing voice so accurately that it's kind of spooky.

As "Deliver Me From Nowhere" begins, Bruce has just wrapped up a big tour, he has a hit song on the radio, and everyone wants to know what's next — including him. The Boss heads back to New Jersey where he sets up shop in a house by a lake and proceeds to start living like a vampire, in that he's seemingly up late every night and very rarely sees the daylight. Reading the work of Flannery O'Connor and catching Terrence Malick's "Badlands" on TV, Bruce begins piecing together some songs. Through it all, he keeps flashing back to a troubled childhood with his loving mother (Gaby Hoffmann) and his drunk bully of a father (Stephen Graham). When he's not writing songs or doing guest spots at the Stone Pony, Bruce likes to park his new car outside of the seemingly abandoned house where he grew up (with a run-down exterior always shot in shadow, it bears a striking resemblance to the Myers House from John Carpenter's "Halloween").

One of the problems that plague musician biopics is that it's hard to make the act of writing songs cinematic. Cooper doesn't quite overcome this issue, as we're treated to long moments where Springsteen jots down lyrics in a notebook or strums his guitar. But White is so good at conveying something going on in Springsteen's troubled mind that it comes across as believable; we accept that he really is giving birth to these songs while sitting on a hideous orange shag bedroom carpet.

"Deliver Me from Nowhere" might be extra special if Cooper had abandoned a traditional narrative and attempted something more akin to Gus Van Sant's Kurt Cobain pastiche "Last Days," foregoing cliches to simply show us Springsteen puttering around his dark, empty house like a ghost. But as introspective and thoughtful as "Deliver Me from Nowhere" tries to be, Cooper is also striving for something commercial, which means his script is full of characters delivering big speeches that sum up the themes of the story. The speeches aren't bad, exactly. But they don't ring true. People don't talk like this. And it feels too much like hand-holding. 

While Bruce works on the album he strikes up a romance with single mom Faye, played by Odessa Young. The sister of a guy Bruce went to high school with, Faye exists in the film to be little more than an obstacle; she wants the relationship to be serious and to spend more time with Bruce, but Bruce is too busy with his music and too busy running away from things that scare him. It's to Young's credit that she makes this rather thin character feel alive with a spirited performance, but you get the sense that Cooper could've cut her from the script entirely (the character seems to be a fictionalized composite of various girlfriends Springsteen had along the way to stardom).

As Bruce works on what will become "Nebraska," it's clear he's going through something he can't quite articulate. He's a haunted, damaged guy clearly suffering from clinical depression, and "Deliver Me from Nowhere" deserves credit for daring to be a movie about working class hero Bruce Springsteen grappling with depression. Clinical depression is a mystery for those who have never suffered from it, and there's something noteworthy about this story of a future rock star struggling with mental issues he can't fully comprehend.

One person who does clearly recognize something is wrong with Bruce is his manager and confidant, Jon Landau, played by Jeremy Strong. Strong's Landau is the warm center of the film; the person who seems to really understand Bruce the most; the person who truly cares for him. Bruce's relationship with his biological father is fraught and damaged, and Landau acts as a kind of surrogate dad; a supportive man who wants what's best for the Boss, record sales be damned.

Strong, one of our best working actors, is predictably good here, as are most of the supporting players, especially Paul Walter Hauser as Mike Batlan. But this is White's film from top to bottom, and he hits all the right notes. I suppose a cynical argument could be made that White's take on Springsteen isn't that far removed from his tormented Carmy on "The Bear," but the actor is so dynamic, so magnetic that it's easy to get swept up in Bruce's tortured state.

This film is perhaps too serious and humorless for its own good — "Deliver Me from Nowhere" is the type of movie that suggests being a rock star is a miserable experience. But it also does a fine job of showcasing the act of creating meaningful art. Pop music can be so frivolous, so thoughtless. And while that can be fun to listen to, there's something noteworthy about an artist trying to create something pulled from the deepest, darkest places of their soul rather than just churning out a tune people can dance to.

Melancholy and autumnal (the film is mostly set after January, but Masanobu Takayanagi's cinematography, full of dead leaves and cold boardwalks, feels like fall), "Deliver Me from Nowhere" is an appropriately muted movie about the creation of a muted album. The ultimate problem here is that unlike Springsteen, Cooper doesn't seem willing to stick to his vision and we get the occasional flashes of something more mundane; something more traditional.

Still, this is ultimately a worthwhile musician biopic if only for Jeremy Allen White's thoughtful, tortured performance. He's so damn good playing Bruce Springsteen that you more or less want to forgive the movie its flaws.

/Film Rating: 6 out of 10

"Deliver Me from Nowhere" opens in theaters on October 24, 2025.