Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Review: A musician biopic about The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, specifically highlighting the time he was working on his album, ‘Nebraska,’ this film is a really solid, but pretty run of the mill musician biopic. Starring Jeremy Allen White in the lead role, White really transformed into Bruce, nailing both his iconic speaking and singing voices. The film also stars Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau, Springsteen’s manager, in yet another really strong (punny) performance from the actor. The film also features solid performances from Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser (who I always love when he pops up), & Stephen Graham. I want to highlight Graham in particular, because I personally found his performance very raw and think he’s really on a roll this year. I thought the flashbacks scenes were well done and I really liked the black and white aspect when we were looking into the past. Musician biopics are always funny for me, because I’m not a music guy so I have no context and then they start singing and I’m like ‘Oh yeah! I know this one!’ I always appreciate when films shine a light on mental health and that was super present in this one.
High: The obvious high is the performances from Jeremys Allen White & Strong, so I’ll touch on something else. This movie was really slow, but I was locked in the whole time. The writing and structure was phenomenal from Scott Cooper because this movie could’ve very easily ended up boring, but I wasn’t bored once through the two hour run. Another high that I really really liked was how they showed these songs falling into place in Bruce’s mind and how they visibly showed the writing process for these legendary songs.
Low: Yes, there is an inundating amount of musician biopics. Admittedly, this doesn’t bother me. Some are great, some are fine, and some are pretty dang boring. I’d say this one falls between great and fine, landing it squarely in ‘Yeah it was good’ territory. Think about how many mega-influential or popular musicians there were in the 20th century, and truly how few still have biopics, so yes there’s going to be a lot of these movies. I really don’t mind though. I just like watching movies.
Rating: 8.5/10
