{"id":50254,"date":"2025-10-23T15:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T19:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=50254"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:39:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:39:16","slug":"springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/23\/springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere [2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Bruce Springsteen deals with depression and his history while writing Nebraska in Scott Cooper\u2019s disappointing Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Like so many middle-aged dads, I love Bruce Springsteen. The Boss is one of my favorite musical artists and one of the few I own all but a few releases (some live albums and the new Tracks 2 notwithstanding). I rever him, his music, and his showmanship. Still puts on a hell of a show, with more energy and pizzazz than rockers a third his age.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not as much of a fan of biopics. Especially music biopics. As Walk Hard: The Dew Cox Story and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story deftly parodied, they often fall into the same cycles. Even the good ones, like last year\u2019s A Complete Unknown, can\u2019t help but play the hits.\u00a0 While Scott Cooper\u2019s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, written & directed by Scott Cooper and based upon the book of the same name by Warren Zanes,\u00a0 is better than most, it still has all the same issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To be fair, they try really hard to break the Big Music Biopic cycle, presenting a more intimate look at depression and the drive to find heart in heart, to bear the soul and work things out.\u00a0 Deliver Me From Nowhere isn\u2019t the cloying cradle to gr\u2026 still selling out arenas at 76. Instead, the film follows Springeeen coming off The River tour, dealing with his depression, and writing\/recording Nebraska and Born In the USA. He struggles with finding himself in his music and whether he can work and be himself within the image of a rock star.\u00a0 Cooper is no stranger to telling stories about depressed men trying to break their ruts: the similarly music-themed Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace (apparently he listened to Nebraska on repeat while working on it. That tracks.), and Antlers (more horror bend, but still about depression and abuse).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It works when Cooper digs into the silences between the moments of Springsteen alone, struggling, working through his issues through writing and recording. The strongest moments are these low-key moments of Springsteen on his own, or those personal moments he shares with others. I appreciate Cooper\u2019s script refusing to get sentimental and melodramatic about Springsteen’s depression. The word is unspoken, but the audience can understand. The personal story nearly feels honest and true. However, the plot(s) get in the way of the character, meandering in and around, distracting. Thus, I never felt emotionally connected, left at a distance.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, no matter how it does well in presenting the lost, unmoored depression of Springsteen in 1981\/2, Cooper\u2019s script succumbs to biopic cliches far too often, weakening what does work. On the nose, dialogue filled with affirmations and self-importance? Check. Playing a well-known hit and having everyone in the room bob their heads in a \u201chey, I know this!\u201d way for the audience (Born in the U.S.A. in this case)? Check, completely with laughter and scoffs from my audience. Obvious nods to the larger part of Springsteen\u2019s life and career? Check (at one point, one of the guys behind me whispered to his friend,\u00a0 \u201cif he says \u2018we\u2019re just dancing in the dark,\u2019 I\u2019m going to leave\u201d). Cloying references to songs? Check, as we get the \u201cstory\u201d to Mansion on the Hill and literally see the actions of the song. A funny aside: Springsteen has two sisters; the only time either exists is during this song, as Virginia is noted in the lyrics. Before and after the scene, he\u2019s an only child. But that\u2019s the thing. There is so little detail of who is who and the whys of connections, it\u2019s frustrating. Flashbacks to a rough childhood? Glory be, I\u2019ve never had that before. Now in black-and-white! Although his alcoholic father is presented even-handed as a flawed man, not a monster. So I give it that. The performances are often imitation over depth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the center is a merely alright Springsteen by Jeremy Allen White. The very first scene almost derails, putting me on uneven footing. Replicating the last stop on the tour for The River, the stage band has no stage presence, looking like an awkward cover band, and while White replicates Springsteen’s stage moments, his voice has about a tenth of the power. For the record, he does sing many songs, better but still weak, later with Springsteen mixed in a bit. White\u2019s look and sound have a strange aspect. Some angles, he looks like Bruce, others like himself, and others like a young Pacino. It\u2019s a subdued, yet all over the place performance. Any line reading will come out as Pacino, an imitation of The Boss, a sincere reading, or, in moments, I thought of Andrew Dice Clay.\u00a0 However, he\u2019s fantastic about selling his thoughts with a look or stance; he\u2019s an amazing face and body actor. And normally a great speaking actor, I loved him in The Iron Claw (I still haven\u2019t watched The Bear), but wherever he opens his mouth, it all generally goes out the window.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Apparently, Jeremy Strong has perfectly replicated John Landou\u2019s mannerisms and voice, but I couldn\u2019t not hear Woody Allen with a headcold. The poor guy is given the most on-the-nose inspirational poster quote dialogue. So profound! Whether to Bruce or to a wasted Grace Gummer as his sounding board, er, wife, it\u2019s eye-rolling. I know he\u2019s received accolades, but I\u2019ve never connected to Strong; he exudes anti-charisma, trying too hard, and has never felt real.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As cliched as the character was, I rather enjoyed Odessa Young\u2019s performance as the poor single mother Bruce connects with when returning home. Unfortunately, the character is either a composite or straight-up made-up because the film needed a female character who wasn\u2019t his mother (Gabbie Hoffman, also thankless). As good and grounded as she is, the emotional core of their relationship doesn’t work, which a strange out-of-nowhere shift wherein the dialogue doesn\u2019t match what we\u2019ve seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sucks to have Marc Maron on screen, but only give him about eight lines, the first on his about fifth appearance. Funny is there are several times when he opens his mouth to say something and the film cuts (there are a lot of jarring cuts across it). David Krumholtz gets a few minutes, which is nice. Always good to see Paul Walker Houser.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain bothersome aimlessness to Deliver Me From Nowhere. Not just in vague notions of time and place (it was hard to know how much time passed between moments), at one point, it jumps from LA to NYC with no connective tissue, leaving me mightily confused. Again, that editing above, but all the plot threads never amount to depth or much at all. The memories of his dad don\u2019t play into the larger connection; the romance with the single mother is made up, so it can\u2019t. If anything, the drive to keep his bedroom recordings of Nebraska exact in the transfer to a sellable record is the largest plot point, but that\u2019s still a wash. It\u2019s a muddled mush.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nebraska is my favorite The Boss album. And frankly, I\u2019m a little annoyed that I\u2019m going to think of this film every time I spin it in the future. Scott Cooper\u2019s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is an unfocused mess, with a solid depression story drowned in a sea of cliches.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

PS Why the cliche ending title cards didn\u2019t mention little sister Pam\u2019s Sleepaway Camp 2 and 3 triumphs is beyond me (I kid, of course. Funny enough, she was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High while he was off being depressed in New Jersey)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Springsteen deals with depression and his history while writing Nebraska in Scott Cooper\u2019s disappointing Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[140,302,698],"class_list":["post-50254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-biopic","tag-drama","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50259,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50254\/revisions\/50259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}