Bruce Springsteen quarreling and fighting – “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is that good.
It is this unfinishedness that would make “Nebraska” unique even if Bruce Springsteen hadn’t already released five albums before that were great cinema – rock’n’roll as a mythical landscape, music like thunderous reverberations. They are songs about sinners and murderers, about the wrong side of the tracks, disenchanted with all baggage. Skeletons, miniatures, songs that make the wind howl.
Editorial recommendations
Scott Cooper captures the America of Bruce Springsteen
Now Scott Cooper has made a film about Springsteen and “Nebraska” that does both justice. It tells the story of a person and musician in search of himself – a man who has to reckon with himself in order to be able to take the next step. Cooper paints this story on a canvas that he has prepared with his previous films – “Crazy Heart”, “Out of the Furnace”, “Black Mass”, “Hostiles” – a picture of the same America that Springsteen paints in his songs. An unyielding country that demands everything from its residents and yet remains a place of longing.
His most successful painting
Cooper is a chronicler of America, and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is his masterpiece, his most accomplished painting to date. The film has its main character lock himself in Springsteen’s bedroom in Colts Neck on January 3, 1982 with a four-track tape recorder and let things happen. In atmospheric black and white, it pans back in time – to a childhood with a harsh father – and shows the pop culture references that inspired Springsteen.
An exorcism
It shows Springsteen himself struggling, fighting with himself, losing himself in a tender affair and finally deciding to release this mythical Colts Neck demo tape as it is. A snapshot in which everything comes together: who Springsteen is and what he has to say. An exorcism.
Jeremy Allen White shines as the boss
Jeremy Allen White doesn’t look like Springsteen, but for the duration of the film he is. Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau stands at his side – America’s past, present and future in their hands. The inner struggles and conflict are just as much a theme here as the fight against the record company to release an album that would be commercial suicide – a purgatory that you have to go through so that “Born in the USA” can come out the other end.
Our rating: 5 stars
In cinemas from October 23, 2025. More about cast & crew: Film by Scott Cooper, with Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young, Stephen Graham.