In 1981, Bruce Springsteen found himself at a crossroads. He had just finished his tour of The River, which had drawn record audiences with its marathon rock ‘n’ roll revival shows. The E Street Band was in full swing. “Hungry Heart” was his first single to reach the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 charts. His record company’s commitment to promoting his career and getting him into the big leagues had finally paid off. Springsteen was now ready to become a superstar – not the new Dylan or the next Elvis, but to fulfill his destiny of becoming the long-awaited messiah known as “Bruuuuuce.” And the man who was supposed to be the boss was really, madly, deeply confused about what to do next.
Fame didn’t suit him well. Nor hearing his own voice booming from the radio, preaching how to put your money down and play your part. So Bruce retreated to a rental apartment in Colts Neck, New Jersey. He sat in with local bar bands at the Stone Pony and was happy being just another working musician playing Little Richard covers. He read Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. He acquired a newfangled home recording device called the TEAC 144 in case he felt like recording demos for the boys. He thought about his childhood, how much joy he had in dancing with his mother in their old living room, and how much his father terrified him as a child.
And late one night, Bruce happened to see Badlands, Terrence Malick’s 1973 film dramatizing the series of murders of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, on television. A rabbit hole opened up before him. Soon he picked up his guitar and began singing: “He saw her standing/On her front porch/Just a-twirlin’/Her baton.” A few days later, after further fleshing out the song he’d originally called “Starkweather,” Bruce changed the “he” in the first line to “I” – the barren, old, strange death tour of America became a personal affair. Then our hero took a path that ultimately led to the record company freaking out, forcing his manager Jon Landau to defend his friend’s artistic integrity, risking alienating his fan base, and producing the darkest and arguably best masterpiece of his discography to date.
The story of “Nebraska” is well known
Even casual students of Springsteenology 101 know the when, why, and how behind this outlier of an album, not to mention what lay beyond the horizon. But that doesn’t stop “Deliver Me From Nowhere” from telling all the details about the making of “Nebraska,” his 1982 album that gave voice to incorrigible murderers, tortured highway patrolmen, wannabe gangsters, car thieves and Bruce’s own contradictory memories of his childhood. (That doesn’t stop Disney, the company releasing the film, from asking people to “refrain from revealing spoilers, cameos, character developments, and detailed plot points” – which easily gave us the biggest laugh of the year in 2025).
Based on Warren Zanes’ invaluable book of the same title, writer-director Scott Cooper’s thinly edited miniature biography boils everything down to a pivotal year in Bruce’s life, just before the boss ascends into the stratosphere. First, however, the rock star must come dangerously close to hitting rock bottom.
And who better to play a moody, unpredictable Bruce than Jeremy Allen White? Forget “The Bear” – meet the boss who struggles with the same demons and nagging self-doubt that would make Carmy Berzatto nod stoically.
Fortunately, White doesn’t try to imitate Springsteen; Aside from a few jumps on stage and a brief, hoarse conversation after the concert, there’s no real attempt to “imitate” Bruce (Although the idea of releasing a soundtrack with the actor singing songs from “Nebraska” would certainly… be an option.) White deftly leans into a general loner vibe, suggesting someone in the wilderness of his own isolation has lost. Springsteen was famous enough to be recognized by a car salesman and passerby, but still local enough to hang out with the neighborhood rockers every Sunday night. He’s fighting what’s coming at him and trying to figure out where he belongs. “I know who you are,” the salesman admits. “That makes us like-minded people,” Springsteen replies.
Deliver Me From Nowhere works best when you forget you’re watching a biopic – ironic given the title and marketing – and focus on one of the other half-dozen genres that Cooper and Co. serve. It’s a procedural film that wants to show you how Springsteen did a handful of sparse, sketchy takes on “Atlantic City,” “Mansion on the Hill” and “Nebraska” in his bedroom, and how he and his collaborators struggled to preserve the raw feel of those four-track demos, modern sound mixes be damned.
It’s a character study about a small town boy who tries to hold on to his roots in order to stay grounded when it comes to where he’s going. It’s a Greek tragedy given a serious Gothic makeover, with black-and-white flashbacks showing a young Bruce (Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr.) living in the shadow of an imposing, menacing father (Stephen Graham, great as always) and protective mother (Gaby Hoffmann). Family ties and the American working class milieu are a Cooper specialty – see Out of the Furnace, Black Mass, Crazy Heart – and these scenes stand out from the rest of the narrative and bring out the best in the filmmaker.
And it’s a love story, although not between Bruce and his girlfriend Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a composite of, according to his autobiography, “the perfectly good women” whom he “has repeatedly grossly disappointed.” At its core, “Deliver” is a tribute to the connection between Springsteen and Jon Landau, played here with great energy by Jeremy Strong. As manager, consigliere, confidant, guardian angel and wall between Bruce and the Columbia Records executives, Landau is the best friend a self-sabotaging rock star could ask for.
Even when he hears the future in the form of the E Street Band’s first recording of “Born in the USA,” this loyal advocate stands by his man. You’ll get your blockbuster, you suits, but this is the next album. Yes, that’s what it sounds like. No, there will be no press, no tours and no sex symbol poses on the cover. Landau is not in the music business. He’s in the Bruce Springsteen business, and what the boss wants, the boss gets.
One wonders if something similar didn’t happen to the film producers who thought they were getting the next musical superhero spectacle from lullaby to funeral – a “Boss-hemian Rhapsody”. After watching an early reenactment of the final concert of the River tour, in which the final minutes of “Born to Run” were treated like Queen at Live Aid, they probably floated out of their seats. Then, when they see little, monochrome Bruce crouched next to his father as he watches Night of the Hunter, their reaction might be a 1982 encore: “So this is the biography, and it’s going to be a trauma drama that looks and sounds like this?”
It’s probably the only movie about a rock star where the reward isn’t gold records, but therapy and the sight of a grown man sitting on his elderly father’s lap. The highlight is not a raised fist in a sold-out arena. It is a moment when, to paraphrase the Bible, Bruce cried.
What do Springsteen fans say about “Deliver Me From Nowhere”?
Of course, there’s also the $100 million question: What will Springsteen fans think? Some will find it too dark. We can’t blame them. Others will wish for more sequences like the one in the Power Station, where Bruce and the band play “Born in the USA” and comply with Landau’s cheesy request to “Burn it down.” We don’t blame them either, because despite the film’s flaws, what Cooper has given audiences here is far more compelling than a live-action compilation of his greatest hits.
However, many will likely appreciate how well the film reflects not the Bruce of the early 1980s, but the Bruce of the 2020s, who has become remarkably reflective and honest with himself in his fall years. Deliver Me From Nowhere is the story of an artist who follows his muse off a cliff. The fact that you know he’s parachuting to safety and creating a timeless work without compromise makes for a predictably happy ending.
But it is actually a portrait of a slowly progressing nervous breakdown that was only narrowly avoided because the protagonist was ready to finally come to terms with his past. The song that comes to mind at the end is not from “Nebraska.” It comes from the title song of an album he released 40 years later, in which the hero “carries a cross of my calling/On wheels of fire I roll here.” Bruce, who was poised to become the savior of rock ‘n’ roll, fell into a hole. Then he exorcised something from the depths of his psyche through these dark dirges, and you realize you’ve been watching him pick himself up for two hours.