Coming off a successful tour, Bruce (Jeremy Allen White) struggles to adjust to the downtime. When neither a return to his humble hometown nor the purchase of a fancy new car making him feel any better, he gets back to making music, using a four-track recorder to turn his bedroom into a makeshift studio. The music he makes eventually becomes the album "Nebraska", a tonal shift he is determined to pursue, even as his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) comes under pressure from record label higher-ups desperate for Springsteen to focus on the certified bangers he's also got up his sleeve. In amongst this, we see a budding romance with single mum and cafe worker Faye and flashbacks to his childhood.
The most compelling part of Deliver Me From Nowhere is the stuff revolving around the creation of music. We see how Bruce is inspired by Terrance Malick's classic movie Badlands to channel his inner struggles into a darker, more sombre type of record. We also get a surprisingly interesting history lesson about the technicalities of music equipment at the time, with the film giving a fair amount detail regarding exactly what the limitations of recording at home were versus a proper studio. The stand out segment of the film revolves around producers trying to transfer the exact sound of the demo tape to vinyl, although an ongoing joke about the tape not being in a case is pretty stupid (just put it in one?). We also get the rare treat of actually feeling sorry for a music executive, as Jon lays it on the line to an increasingly crestfallen Al Teller (David Krumholtz) that, not only is the label's latest hit maker delivering an experimental record but he won't be touring, or even putting his face on the album cover. The ideas of Bruce's music being a statement of where he is in life and the desire to create something true being an essential coping mechanism are the most interesting themes of the movie.
The other elements are a little more by the numbers. There is a commendable effort to address mental health, with the fact Springsteen learned how to manage depression at this point in his life going some way to explaining why he hasn't had the drug or alcohol struggles that define so many rock legends, but the conclusion is sudden. In a world where so many films could do with trimming fifteen minutes or so, we could have done with a bit longer here. There is a heavy emphasis on Bruce's relationship with his father, played with sympathetic menace by Stephen Graham, whose alcohol problem leads to moments of violence in flashbacks and diminished cognitive function in the present. You can see the journey the relationship has gone on but there isn't much texture to it. The other major relationship in the musician's life is the one with his dedicated manager Jon, who goes to bat completely for his client's vision and intuitively knows what Bruce is going through. His dedication is charming, but the dynamic arrives fully formed and the tale of how they became so close may have been more interesting than the story we get here.
In case it hasn't become clear by now, Deliver Me From Nowhere is a very male centric film. Odessa Young plays Springsteen's love interest, Faye (not a real person but an amalgam of people distilled into one character) but she is little more than a doe eyed fangirl, there to look sad as the central character's flawed genius drives him away from her. His mum exists solely to define his relationship with his father and Jon's wife appears in few scenes for the express purpose of listening to her husband talk about his hopes and concerns for Bruce. Maybe that's life in the world of The Boss but, given his large female audience, it would have been nice if they could have squeezed an interesting part for a woman into his film.
In terms of the central performance, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to spot that Jeremy Allen White isn't exactly a dead ringer for Bruce Springsteen. That isn't too much of a problem as capturing the spirit of the subject is more important than playing lookalike and White gives a soulful performance. Whether it will be enough for die-hard fans is another matter.
Overall, Deliver Me From Nowhere is a decent movie, but doesn't have the volume turned up enough on any particular thread to stand out. The creative stuff is great, but doesn't comprise much of the runtime and the depression angle isn't fleshed out enough to say anything profound about mental health. Crucially for fans (and producers hoping this would hit big at the box office), there isn't enough playing of the hits for a feel good jukebox musical. Not exactly a bum note, but not a nailed on banger either.
6 sellout tours out of 10.
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