Deliver Me From Nowhere is not the Best Springsteen Movie
General Reviews
As of November 16, 2025, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere has grossed just $40 million at the box office against a $55 million budget after three weeks in theatres. It deserved better.
The movie is far from perfect. It includes a composite love interest storyline that I could have done without. I would have preferred more scenes with Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), The E Street Band, and other personalities from the studio interacting with Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White). The talented David Krumholtz is underutilized as Columbia record executive Al Teller. That said, the film includes great performances, particularly from White and Strong, and it tells a story about mental health and the creative process that I imagine would resonate with a lot of people if they saw the movie. And, yes, it has some musical sequences that you can’t help but feel happy watching.
I’ve heard some people suggest that the movie doesn’t work because it features “TV actors,” not “movie stars”. I reject this premise. It’s outdated in 2025. The lines between a film actor and a TV actor are blurred these days. Streaming has loosened the restraints television once had. Riskier stories are more likely to be greenlit as shows instead of movies. Film actors like Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, and Julianne Moore have been drawn to TV. TV stars transitioning to film still seems less common, but, in the case of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, it works.
Jeremy Allen White, best known for Shameless and The Bear, learned to play the guitar and sing for the film. His vocals were mixed with Bruce’s in post-production, but he captures Bruce’s magnetic presence as a performer. He’s alone for many scenes, particularly in the first half of the movie. His facial expressions give silent monologues that convey Bruce’s inner turmoil and struggle with depression.
Jeremy Strong, best known for Succession, gives an extremely warm performance as Springsteen’s longtime manager and friend, Jon Landau. He’s made his name playing wicked characters like Kendall Roy in Succession and Roy Cohn in The Apprentice. In contrast to his Oscar-nominated turn as Roy Cohn, there’s something just so comforting about him saying to Bruce, “You look like you could use some pancakes.” Jeremy Strong is known for being passionate and serious about his craft as an actor. He does his best work when he pulls on that part of himself in the characters he plays. The eagerness with which Jon Landau pitches Bruce projects and relays information from the studio is riveting. In quiet moments when he intently listens to Bruce’s Nebraska cuts, his face tells the story of a man who knows everything there is to know about music, yet is constantly learning more. I can’t help but feel good watching his final scene. Tears line his eyes as he watches Bruce, now receiving treatment for depression, perform on stage. He pushes back the tears as Bruce steps off the stage and embraces him.
Stephen Graham, known for his Emmy-nominated role in the Adolescence miniseries, plays Bruce’s father, Douglas Springsteen. Douglas suffered from mental health issues throughout his life. Bruce had a complicated relationship with him. There is a scene in the film where Bruce’s mother calls her son to say that his father left home. She reveals that he recently lost a job at the airport and went off his medication. Bruce finds him at a bar, manages to get him to a hospital, and back on his medication. He later meets up with Jon Landau, and the two men hug. Jon offers to Bruce that they postpone a recording session. Bruce declines. Though Bruce is one of the biggest rock stars in the world, this scene, where a young man struggles to take care of a mentally ill family member, is relatable to many. I went into the movie less familiar with Graham than I was with White and Strong. His performance as a troubled father, trying to make amends later in life, is familiar. Some of his flashback scenes to when Bruce was a boy evoke Stanley Kowalski of A Streetcar Named Desire, but familiarity doesn’t make a character untrue. Douglas’s apology to his son rings true when Stephen Graham delivers it.
These actors are used to character-driven work on television. Bruce Springsteen wanted Jeremy Allen White to play him after he saw The Bear. White’s character on the show struggles with mental health, and Bruce thought him an ideal candidate for this story. White, Strong, and Graham were the perfect trio for a character-driven biopic.
Bruce Springsteen promoted the movie along with the cast and director Scott Cooper. Bruce himself is a cinephile. Warren Zanes’ book Deliver Me From Nowhere recounts young Bruce going to the cinema alone. Terrance Malick’s film Badlands inspired the title track off Nebraska. An unproduced screenplay inspired “Born in the USA”.
Springsteen needle drops are everywhere lately. Air, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, and Long Shot all made great use of Springsteen songs. The Boss sold his back catalogue to Sony Music in 2021 for $550 million. Sony can choose who licenses those songs and how they’re used in film and television. There is good incentive for artists to sell their back catalogue. A legacy act can score hundreds of millions of dollars at once instead of collecting royalty cheques over the last few decades of their life. That money can go towards investments. I don’t doubt that Bruce had financial motivation for selling his back catalogue, but his songs have always been featured in iconic movie scenes. Jerry Maguire makes great use of "Secret Garden”. Bruce won an Oscar when he wrote and performed “The Streets of Philadelphia” for the 1993 film Philadelphia. I suspect he wanted that to continue. There’s a lack of pretentiousness to Bruce Springsteen that I love. I get the sense that he wants his music to belong to everyone.
Bruce once helped make a true story about his music- but not about him- into a feature film. Blinded by the Light (2019) tells the story of Javed, a Pakistani-British teenager living in Thatcher-era England. He struggles to balance the expectations of his immigrant parents with fitting in at school. He writes poetry as a hobby and takes English literature electives behind his father’s back (his father thinks he’s taking a sensible Economics class). His friend lets him borrow a cassette tape. Later, upset, he tears pages out of his poetry journal and throws them out the window into the night. He plugs the cassette into his Walkman.
“Dancing In the Dark” pours into Javed’s ears. The lyrics appear on screen for the audience. We watch awe on Javed’s face against the cool colour palette of his bedroom. Javed runs outside to collect the pages from his poetry journal, blowing in the wind. The lyrics to “Dancing In The Dark” populate the screen as Javed collects the floundering pages from the damp nighttime grass. The Boss inspires him to pursue writing. The film follows Javed as he finds his voice and learns to understand his parents through Bruce Springsteen’s music.
Javed is inspired by real-life journalist Sarfraz Manzoor. Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend It Like Beckham, adapted Manzoor’s memoir, Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion, and Rock n' Roll. The film, in my opinion, is the best way to do a music biopic. A story about a superfan allows us to reflect on and celebrate what we love about an artist’s music. It avoids the trappings of constant comparisons to other music biopics (we literally just had a biopic about an American musician with wavy brown hair, going hard on the harmonica, and against the studio grain). It also avoids the possibility of meddling stars, band members, and family members who don’t want to be portrayed a certain way. Bruce Springsteen has an active public life in 2025. We know what he looks and sounds like. We get his vibe. An actor playing him has little room for interpretation. Jeremy Allen White did a fantastic job. He took on a role that will be held up to intense scrutiny. I’m sure he understands that. As great as his performance is, it has a stiff undertone to it. It’s not his fault. It couldn’t have been avoided.
Still, I’m glad this movie got made. Comforting images and sounds are baked into it. Many scenes take place in Northeastern US cities, in the evening or at night, in the winter. I’m from a similar climate, albeit in Canada, and it’s a nostalgic vibe for me. The scenes where the folks at CBS Records work to master the songs on Bruce’s demo cassette are competency porn at its finest. And, I can’t not smile when Bruce and his crew record “Born in the USA” in the power station. The power station has great warm lighting, and the version of “Born in the USA” that Jeremy Allen White recorded for the movie has some prominent keyboard work that I love.
Over time, I could see Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere evolving into a sick day movie for me. Or a movie I put on during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I might go fold laundry or something during the love interest scenes, but we need comfort movies. Who says a biopic can’t be one?
Sources:
ABC News. (2025, October 21). “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” - A Conversation with the Cast. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgUxUCkPlj8
James, D. (2025, October 22). How the “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” Sound Team Captured The Boss’s Raw Emotion. Motion Picture Association. https://www.motionpictures.org/2025/10/how-the-springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere-sound-team-captured-the-bosss-raw-emotion/
Leib, M. (2025, October 22). How Jeremy Allen White prepared to sing like Bruce Springsteen in “Deliver Me from Nowhere”. Good Morning America. https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/story/jeremy-allen-white-prepared-sing-bruce-springsteen-deliver-126769778
Lifton, D. (2019, July 19). The Story Behind Every Bruce Springsteen Song in “Blinded by the Light” . Ultimate Classic Rock. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/blinded-by-the-light-soundtrack-songs/
Sisario, B. (2021, December 15). Bruce Springsteen Sells Music Catalog in Massive Deal. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/arts/music/bruce-springsteen-sells-music-catalog.html
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (2025). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved November 16, 2025, from https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt31923069/?ref_=bo_se_r_1
Zanes, W. (2023). Deliver Me from Nowhere. Crown.
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