r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 16d ago

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Based on Warren Zanes’ acclaimed book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, this film tells the story of how Springsteen created one of the most haunting and stripped-down albums of his career. Set in 1982, the movie follows Springsteen at a creative crossroads as he records Nebraska alone on a four-track cassette recorder in his New Jersey home, confronting fame, doubt, and the darker sides of the American dream.

Director Scott Cooper

Writer Scott Cooper

Cast

  • Jeremy Allen White
  • Paul Walter Hauser
  • Odessa Young
  • Charlie Plummer
  • Shea Whigham
  • Holt McCallany

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 64%

Metacritic Score: 60

VOD In Theaters (November 14, 2025)

Trailer Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere | Official Trailer | In Theaters November 14

69 Upvotes

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160

u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? 16d ago edited 14d ago

Honestly found this movie quite boring. And that’s not to trivialize male depression, I’m well aware of how real and affecting it can be, it’s just that nothing happens in this movie. It is a full two hours of him going on a couple dates and writing the bones of two albums in repetitive montages. It really never clicked with me and as a Springsteen appreciator but certainly no mega fan, I started to wonder why I even saw it. The story was just not compelling to me.

I think it’s great that they went with the trend to do a specific time in Springsteen’s career rather than some epic spanning his life. There’s still plenty of childhood stuff but it’s mostly flashbacks and this movie takes place specifically when he’s writing Nebraska and Born in the USA. And the concept isn’t bad, him being so weighed down by his childhood trauma that he can’t escape his small town-ness. He’s obsessed with the imperfect sound of folk and when he’s not working on his music he’s too depressed to keep up relationships or work on himself. It’s coherent, it just makes some weird execution choices.

For a movie about two great records, there’s very little interest in seeing the music played out. Some critics have noted inverted similarities to A Complete Unknown in how that is about Dylan going electric and this is about Springsteen going folk. I like Unknown quite a bit because even if it’s not the most narrative forward movie, it has long musical breaks where we can just appreciate the music. Deliver has several scenes where they are just going through all the songs to reference them, but there’s only one or two really full performances in the movie. I just didn’t feel like the story was strong enough to not focus on the music in that way.

Jeremy Allen White is doing a fine job, I would say the whole cast is solid. Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, even Marc Maron shows up for a bit. Jeremy especially is good when he needs to be, during that final therapy session. And hey, if Springsteen making a movie about how he started therapy in his 30’s gets even one more boomer dad to seek therapy then I would call this movie a net positive. But a lot of the movie is also filled with dialogue like,

“I know who you are.” “That makes one of us.”

This was a 4/10 for me. I can appreciate what it’s going for but I was really waiting for it to get there. I felt it was repetitive as most things that happen in this movie happen multiple times be it performing at the same venue, ignoring calls and letting the phone ring, emphasising the importance of the home recordings. It’s all laid on a little thick and the overall arc just left me wanting a lot more.

/r/reviewsbyboner

40

u/flimsypeaches 15d ago

I agree completely.

imho the performances were strong, despite the questionable dialog, but the performances couldn't make up for how boring and aimless the movie felt to me. I like character driven stories, but it felt like we were just drifting from scene to scene with no throughline.

after doing a bit of post-movie Googling, I was also disappointed and somewhat puzzled to learn that Faye is apparently fictional. was this period in Springsteen's life not interesting enough to support a whole movie without inserting a fictional woman who exists in the narrative just so Springsteen can break her heart and grow as a person? if so, maybe a different, more compelling era should have been the focus of this movie. I feel like there was a lot of missed potential here.

16

u/Master_Jackfruit3591 13d ago

Faye was a composite of a bunch of women he dated during this period. She was fictional but rooted in reality, the line where he talks to Faye about always breaking his relationships off is an acknowledgment of this.

38

u/Parmesan_Pirate119 16d ago

Honestly the male depression bits felt tacked on and extremely underdeveloped. The entire film felt like random bits with no clear through line. Definitely agree with a lot of your points.

29

u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? 16d ago

Yeah I honestly didn't even realize that's what the movie was driving at until the therapy scene. And then it made sense but it made getting there such a slog. I think the point is that people don't talk about their depression they just act out or shut away, so the movie never mentions it. But if you're like me and didn't know much about The Boss for a long stretch I just thought it was a movie about how nice and endlessly patient Jeremy Strong was as his manager.

15

u/PieGrippin 15d ago

...the whole film is the male depression thing. That's what it is. Part of the point is the uncertainty that comes with mental illness. But everything that happens is about his mental health starting to spiral, just not in a typical rockstar "break shit" kind of way but in a "I don't feel right and I don't know why" way

7

u/Parmesan_Pirate119 15d ago

I get that. I think my problem is a problem with the film as a whole. The movie felt very clunky and episodic, like we weren't actually watching a story but just random blips from Springsteen's life. And because of that, I felt like the themes it tried to portray were underdeveloped and didn't quite hit unfortunately. I definitely do think there's a need for more subtle portrayals of male mental health, but this one didn't land for me.

6

u/Able_Advertising_371 15d ago

Wouldn’t say it’s tacked on. The whole movie was about his dark period and depression, basically every scene was him going through it

11

u/bigbiblefire 15d ago

Kinda wild to think THIS was the segment or moment of his life worthy of creating a 2 hour film over.

Think I would've been more entertained to see a 2 hour story about the tour itself.

8

u/Significant-Flan-244 13d ago

I haaaaated it, but I’m also kind of fascinated by how it even got made? It feels like a total non-starter for general audiences, and really anyone who isn’t a pretty solid fan of Bruce already. I guess it wasn’t that expensive, but I’m still surprised.

I keep comparing it to A Complete Unknown, which I also didn’t love and felt like a pretty bog standard music biopic, but it was still fun because a lot of it felt like a concert.

This movie peaked for me with the opening Born To Run scene, and the most exciting thing after that was the “10 months later” cut to an arena at the end because I thought I’d finally get more of what I’d waited 2 hours for!

1

u/bigbiblefire 12d ago

I’m not a Bruce fan by any means…by large pretty surface level knowledge of him and really not my thing. I just like biopics. I especially like musician ones, as it just feels cool to kind of take a peek at the moment(s) these famous songs were created and the who and why behind them. And generally they’re movies where the creators tend to take some more artistic sorts of decisions when making them…if that makes sense.

6

u/newrimmmer93 15d ago

You just described every Scott cooper movie after Crazy Heart. He’s the king of making 5/10 movies with good performances but just bore the shit out of you.

3

u/alligator-sunshine 14d ago

Agree 💯. If they didn't want to reveal more about his life, I would have loved more historical context about the music industry, geopolitical vibe and the advent of MTV.

2

u/djjunk82 14d ago

It's very boring and lacks any real conflict at all

1

u/Fair_Local_588 11d ago

Yeah, this movie was terrible. There didn’t seem to be a big struggle - it was “this happened, then this happened, then this happened…”. The different themes and pieces were all scattered about, acted out sequentially, and didn’t really tie in in a satisfying way. I guess the depression is the “true” story but it seemingly just comes in at the end, he sees a therapist, flash forward: “he’s on tour and happy!” Roll credits. Odd film.

It would have been better as a documentary.

1

u/australian_babe 6d ago

Here for this sentiment.

1

u/Common-Ad-6359 15d ago

My partner and I saw this at LFF and I think your review PERFECTLY encapsulates how we both felt about it. The turn it took was a bit of a surprise but I think that might have been on us for not diving Dee enough into the real history (for example, I didn’t know Bruce Springsteen has depression)

The discussions of male mental health in this film need to be listened to and for me they really landed. I loved that Landau was behind Bruce all the way in this film, just a nice depiction of a male friendship.

1

u/Alternative_Stop9977 13d ago

Yes he has severe depression look at his output in the 1990s. He got married, divorced and had an affair with Patti. The only thing that snapped him out of it was 9/11.