Deliver Me From Nowhere‘s first hour makes for a totally forgettable, mediocre cookie-cutter musical biopic. It’s the better half of the film by roughly one million percent. Writer-director Scott Cooper delivers a film that goes nowhere in the most boring way possible. He took a story about an all-time great musician making a deeply personal piece of art and turned it into an incoherent and aimless mess. His movie has no sense of time and feels like its 80% shots of Bruce Springsteen looking at his notebook. Then it gets even worse. Deliver Me From Nowhere doesn’t reveal what the hell it’s actually about or why it was even made until a final reckless, laughable 20 minutes that shows this was a deeply interesting moment in the Boss’ life. This movie just had no interest in telling it.
The official synopsis for Deliver Me From Nowhere is technically correct but entirely a lie. From 20th Century Studios:
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album when he was a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past.
The film barely explores exactly why he’s “struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past.” It struggles to explore anything, really. We see why he’s haunted by the lasting trauma of an abusive alcoholic father, but at no point does the film connect those demons with his successful career. Like everything else in this terrible movie, Deliver Me From Nowhere just says something is true without showing us why. It’s lazy. It expects you to either already know important stuff about Bruce Springsteen (defeating the whole point of a biopic!) or doesn’t think it matters. Who’s that guy? How long have those two been friends? Who cares! This movie can’t even be bothered to let you know if six days or six months have passed between scenes. This film is allergic to exposition. And character development. And storytelling.
(At one point in a flashback, Bruce suddenly has a sister despite the film treating him as an only child until that moment. Then we never see or hear about her again. It’s unintentionally hilarious and a perfect metaphor for how this script lacks the basics needed to tell a story effectively. Also hilarious? The terrible line about how Bruce is going to “repair the entire world” from the trailer isn’t in the movie.)
It does find time to throw in half a dozen lines of dialogue so bad I responded with a sound that exists halfway between a groan and a laugh. That’s the closest I ever came to having any sort of visceral emotional reaction to this film. At least that was true before anger and disgust took over in the final 20 minutes.
Watching Deliver Me From Nowhere is like watching a speck of dust float in and out of a bunch of interesting peoples’ lives without ever settling down so we can spend meaningful time with them. That’s what makes this movie especially frustrating. Not only does it fail to tell a good story about one of the best, most famous musicians ever, it does so while also ignoring really good stories going on around him. What’s it like managing a great artist while they’re struggling with something personal? What’s it like trying to date someone like that? There are scenes and moments in Deliver Me From Nowhere where better movies told from a different point of view take over for a minute or two. Oh how I wish I got to watch them instead.
What I got was a film that is utterly baffling in its lack of depth and focus that thinks it can suddenly become good by revealing what’s actually been going on this whole time. It’s a disaster. I thought it was maaaaybe about a creative genius working out his personal problems through art. That’s the type of story I usually love. But this movie isn’t about the artistic process. Not really. It’s about a guy who it turns out is dealing with a problem the movie never even suggests is the problem until it suddenly says it is. It’s awful. People walked out of my screening furious about this movie and where it ultimately went. I was right there with them.
There are a few things to like, at least. The film, almost by accident it would seem, does something very interesting in its portrayal of Bruce’s abusive dad Doug. Played by Stephen Graham, a typical biopic would show him as a pure monster. But Deliver Me From Nowhere treats him with real humanity and grace. (Right up until it maddeningly tells us we only had part of the story, undercutting what happened before.) The film’s ability to see Doug as the person he is, major flaws and all, feels very much in line with Springtseen’s ethos to find the humanity in all.
Jeremy Strong is also really excellent as Bruce’s longtime manager and friend Jon Landau. Their relationship is the closest the movie comes to actually developing a single idea. Odessa Young is also really good as Bruce’s love interest Faye, a composite character supposedly based on real woman from Springsteen’s life at this time.
Young is good despite being burdened by a terrible script. She keeps saying he won’t let her in to his life. Do we ever see any such moments? No. Every interaction the couple has on screen before she starts talking about their problems is delightful. It’s total nonsense, a perfect example of how Deliver Me From Nowhere says something is true without putting in any of the work to show us it really is. All of its ideas and (attempts at) depth are paper thin. I’d call the movie vapid, but that’s too kind. That would imply it’s merely not interesting or stimulating. It is aggressively empty and boring.
It also doesn’t help that at no point did I ever buy Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. Not once, not even for one single scene. He’s not outright bad, and with a decent script he might have even ben good. But ultimately his performance just doesn’t work. That makes him the fifth best thing about this film. (The music is the best. The entire movie is the worst.)
Deliver Me From Nowhere might be about a musical genius, but if you want to know why a very personal Bruce Springsteen album is worth knowing about listen to Nebraska instead. This film will only make you like this record less. It will also make you like movies less.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He thinks you should check out Pete Yorn’s live cover of “Atlantic City.” You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
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