Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Starring Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser
Directed by Scott Cooper

Around this time in 2024, "A Complete Unknown" shattered the musical biopic subgenre and elevated it to greater heights. Timothee Chalamet's performance of Bob Dylan was prolific, and earned the movie numerous Oscar nominations and grossed over $140 million worldwide. Up to that point, the musical biopic subgenre was lackluster to say the least, with only a few notable exceptions. Now, it seems that they want lightning to strike twice with "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere," but sadly sometimes lightning just doesn't do that, and while the film is fine, it's muddied by the tropes of the subgenre before it course corrects to form a powerful study in depression, but by then it's entirely too late.

In 1981, Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) is a star in his own right, having produced a top ten song in "Hungry Heart," and the studio wants him to create a number one hit. He moves to Colts Neck, New Jersey, to work on his upcoming album with the help of his manager and producer Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), but he's burdened by the memories of his abusive father growing up. 

After a gig at a local club he meets Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a single mother who enjoys his music, and the two begin a relationship. As he continues writing songs, Springsteen slips into his own haunting memories and takes him down a path of depression that forces him to come to terms with his past if he's able to have a successful future. 

For the first two parts of "Deliver Me From Nowhere," the movie is crowded with cliches from other musical biopics - the haunting childhood, the longsuffering girlfriend, the quest for the perfect song - it's something that's done in countless other biopics with the same effect: yawn. I wondered by someone with Jeremy Allen White's stature would stoop to this level of mediocrity, but then the last act turns into something no one expected - a touching, emotional tour into the depths of depression and shows that no one is immune to its icy cold touch: not even the Boss himself.

This is where the film shifts focus, and for anyone who managed to slog through the snow snoozedom they were treated with a tour de force performance by White in the most subtle of ways. He crafted demos of songs for the new album using unaccompanied sounds and made the song feel imperfect and unvarnished, and despite the company wanting to make it perfect, Springsteen demands they keep it in its original form - he also tells them there'll be no publicity, no tour, no editing for the album's release. He doesn't even want his face on the cover art. He is haunted by his past, and isn't able to really focus on the present. It's a sheer surprise to see White in such an emotional state, considering the whole first part of the film he sleepwalks through the generic performance.  While it's nowhere near Oscar-worthy, it's still something to see, like the prize after sitting through over an hour of drivel autowritten by AI (probably not, but it felt that way).

The Score: A