Reviews For The Easily Distracted: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Title: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Describe This Movie Using One St. Elmo’s Fire Quote:
ALEC: “No Springsteen is leaving this house! You can have all the … Carly Simons.”

Brief Plot Synopsis: Singer-songwriter is born to run, but can’t escape the darkness on the edge of town his subconscious.

Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2.5 Denise Huxtables out of 5.

Tagline: N/A

Better Tagline: “Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night.”

Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Freehold, NJ’s own Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) has just come off a successful tour in support of The River, and both the record company and manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) are ready to strike while the iron is hot. Springsteen, however, isn’t content to chase the next hit single, and draws inspiration from Terence Malick’s Badlands and his own troubled history with his father for more somber inspiration. You could almost say he has a … hungry heart. Ok, I’ll stop now.

“Critical” Analysis: The relative trickle of musical biopics that came down the cinematic pike at the beginning of the century (Ray, Walk the Line) has turned into a deluge. This is thanks to a combination of Boomer nostalgia and such movies serving as reliable awards bait for its stars. The recent efforts have ranged from quite good (Rocketman, Elvis) to rather bad (Bohemian Rhapsody, Back to Black), with most efforts falling somewhere in the middle (One Love, Respect).

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is the latter. Writer/director Scott Cooper is clearly a fan of the Boss (the screening I attended began with a clip of Cooper explaining his “vision” for the movie). And, with credits under his belt like Crazy Heart, has shown a knack for thoughtful examinations of artistic characters. Deliver Me From Nowhere attempts to replicate this, only with less success.

Cooper takes a page from A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s widely lauded 2024 Bob Dylan bio, by narrowing the film’s focus. Specifically, the two years following the River tour when Springsteen wrote and recorded songs in a rented house in Colts Neck, NJ. These songs would become Nebraska and, later, Born in the U.S.A. Springsteen is already “The Boss” at this point, having released a trio of superlative albums (Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River) and establishing a reputation for Herculean live performances.

But Springsteen is a troubled guy; nonplussed by label demands, struggling with the direction of his new music, and coming to grips with his abusive childhood. The result is a lot of brooding Bruce: on the seashore, in his hometown of Freehold, and in his rental living room while Badlands plays seemingly on repeat.

And nobody broods quite like Jeremy Allen White. Of course, he doesn’t really look like Bruce Springsteen. Even with his blond locks dyed Boss brown, there’s not the squint-and-you-can-kinda-see-it resemblance that Timothée Chalamet and Joaquin Phoenix had to Dylan and Johnny Cash. He has the Jersey patois down, and wears the jeans and leather jacket well, but it’s still a stretch.

So it’s fortunate that Cooper isn’t focused on those aforementioned live performances. Aside from the opening scene and some of Bruce jamming with the Stone Pony’s house band (Cats on a Smooth Surface), Deliver Me From Nowhere is more concerned with his inner journey. It’d just be nice if the director concentrated on those more powerhouse scenes with White in the third act than having him staring into the middle distance the rest of the time.

White’s pretty good, which is no surprise. Even better is Strong, who holds all the strands together. His Landau is both a friend to Springsteen and a champion of his vision to the suits at Columbia (personified by David Krumholz as label president Al Teller). He’s also who the one who finally got Springsteen help for his depression.

Depression and other mental illnesses also afflicted Springsteen’s father Doug (Adolescence’s Stephen Graham, having quite the run of playing troubled dads), whose negative impact on his son is twofold: abuse — of both the physical and psychological variety — and Bruce’s growing fear that he may turn out like him.

But that’s not exactly an unexamined aspect of biopics, and Deliver Me From Nowhere — though authentic to its surroundings and featuring solid performances all around — doesn’t have a lot new to say. It doesn’t stray significantly from formula, and is also strangely inert And that may be the biggest slight of all against its subject.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in theaters today.

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