Review: Jeremy Allen White Sizzles in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, but the Biopic Trades Darkness for an Invented Romance

I have a soft spot for music biopics, even when they hit the same beats. Sometimes the fun is seeing how a song you know got built; other times it works because you genuinely don’t know the artist’s story. That second thing is what hooked me with Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. I know the hits, I’m not a Bruce diehard, so the Nebraska era felt new to me. The movie sets itself up to be that rare biopic that narrows in and digs deep. It almost gets there.

What the movie is doing

Written and directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) and adapted from Warren Zanes’ book, the film sticks to a single, pivotal window: the aftermath of The River Tour, when Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White, The Bear) retreats to his New Jersey house, spins up a four-track recorder, and starts cutting stark demos. He’s anxious, off-balance, and not chasing arenas. Out of that isolation comes Nebraska, the 1982 album that ditched the rock-and-roll roar for something bare and haunted.

Great premise, wobbly execution

Focusing on one year should free a biopic from the usual career highlight reel. Cooper half-commits. The movie basically splits in two: first, a brisk 'making-of' shuffle from one track to the next; then, a push toward Bruce’s inner storm. That second half is where things should catch fire, but the film brings in depression late and doesn’t sit with it long enough to say anything textured about it.

The biggest eyebrow-raiser: the movie invents a girlfriend, Faye Romano (Odessa Young), who didn’t exist, and gives her a lot of screen time. The intent is obvious — dramatize Bruce’s isolation — but it plays like a generic romance detour that pulls focus from the more compelling thread: how his mental health and family history fed the music. The film also touches on parental abuse, old wounds, and the hard work of forgiveness, but handles those ideas so cleanly and didactically that there’s not much to wrestle with. You can see the whole trajectory coming by the end of act one.

Where it absolutely sings

The music stuff is the payoff. Hearing the songs in demo form — rough edges and all — is genuinely fascinating, especially the gulf between early versions and what we know now. 'Born in the U.S.A.' as a somber, skeletal idea before it became the stadium rattler? That’s the good kind of jolt. Those raw tapes carry the movie’s most honest moments.

The performances doing the heavy lifting

Jeremy Allen White doesn’t just mimic; he plays Bruce as a guy fraying quietly at the edges, and he keeps it inward without turning it into a pouty caricature. He’s doing the work the script sometimes avoids. His brief scenes with Stephen Graham as Bruce’s father, Doug, crackle with the kind of tension that explains a lot without anyone spelling it out. Jeremy Strong shows up as Jon Landau, and he’s solid in the right-hand-man role, but the film lives or dies on White — and he keeps it alive.

• The setup: post-River Tour, Bruce hides out in New Jersey with a four-track, chasing something darker and smaller that becomes 1982’s Nebraska.
• The approach: Scott Cooper adapts Warren Zanes’ book and tries the one-year, no-greatest-hits approach — smart in theory.
• The snag: the movie splits into a tidy making-of and a late-breaking psychological dive that doesn’t go deep enough.
• The choice that backfires: a wholly fictional girlfriend (Odessa Young’s Faye) gets a lot of runtime and turns into a bland subplot that crowds out the mental health angle.
• The craft win: the demo sessions are riveting, and the contrast between early versions (like 'Born in the U.S.A.') and the final cuts is a legit thrill.
• The anchor: Jeremy Allen White carries the film with a restrained, uneasy performance; Stephen Graham’s scenes as Bruce’s father really land; Jeremy Strong supports as Jon Landau.
• The bottom line: informative for anyone who doesn’t know the Nebraska story and musically rewarding, but too safe and too tidy to hit as hard as it could.

Verdict

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere wants to be the intimate, unvarnished version of the musical biopic. Instead, it settles for a well-made, cautious one that explains Nebraska more than it excavates it. Still worth it for the demo sequences and White’s performance — and as a reminder that some of the most lasting art comes from staring down the dark and letting it in.

Screened at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival. In theaters October 24.