In 2024, A Complete Unknown and Better Man proved that musician biopics can still feel alive when they focus on the person behind the artist. A Complete Unknown offered a vivid portrait of Dylan’s contradictions by centering on a turning point in his career, while Better Man used a cradle to present structure to chart Robbie Williams’ long battle with ego and addiction. Both succeeded because they were unafraid to deconstruct their protagonists and explore their flaws, showing that honesty, not structure, is what makes a biopic work.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere promotes itself as a quiet and introspective study of Bruce Springsteen, treating its avoidance of the usual biopic format as a mark of authenticity. Yet despite presenting itself as a deep character study, the film remains surface level and overly reverent, resulting in the worst of both approaches: shallow without entertainment, and introspective without insight.
The film uses the writing and recording of Springsteen’s 1982 record Nebraska as its gateway into the singer’s life. Considered one of the most unconventional albums ever released by a major artist, it tells stories of ordinary people pushed to the edge, inspired by Badlands and by Springsteen’s own search for meaning. Recorded in his New Jersey bedroom on a cassette recorder and released as a demo, imperfections and all, it feels sparse, unpolished, and deeply human. Many describe it as sounding like you are in the same house with the singer, hearing his deepest thoughts.
Focusing on Nebraska should have been the perfect opportunity to capture what made him an artist and to let us truly understand him as a person. Yet instead of mirroring the album’s handmade and spontaneous spirit, the film feels like its complete opposite: safe.
The story hints at Springsteen’s depression and guilt, presenting flashbacks as if secrets were being unearthed, but the result is an oversimplified view of his trauma that recalls Maria from last year or a middling Lost episode. Much is suggested and little is said. It follows the familiar “artist finding himself” template, with pep talks, tense recording sessions, and a relationship arc that pretends to empower its female character while framing her as a clear inferior. Everything unfolds as safely as possible, as if designed to please its producers.
The rest operates on the same wavelength. The actors never disappear into their roles. Jeremy Allen White delivers the most textbook impersonation imaginable. Despite looking distractingly unlike Springsteen, he focuses on copying a few physical details and commits to being unlikable without the depth that could make that compelling. It is one thing to explore a flawed man without excusing him, as A Complete Unknown did; it is another to confuse unlikable for profound. Jeremy Strong, an actor who can alternate between great naturalism (Succession) and heavy exaggeration (Armageddon Time), lands closer to the latter, with every line delivered as if it were a revelation. His dialogue with his wife, overloaded with exposition, borders on parody with a line about the singer being “in a dark place” being unintentionally hilarious. Stephen Graham brings nuance, but the film is too timid to use it. We see flashes of distance, disappointment, and anger between father and son, yet they feel staged and sanitized, never conveying how that relationship shaped Springsteen’s deepest anxieties.
Visually, the film is muddy, dark, and low in contrast. The heavy use of browns and grays seems intended to suggest grit but instead looks manufactured.
It ends up closer to Bohemian Rhapsody in its dishonesty than to the raw self-exposure of Rocketman or Better Man, but without the entertainment pleasures of the former. Its small highlight comes early in a brief “Born to Run” performance that thrills only because the song itself is one of the best ever written. Both Springsteen and his longtime manager Jon Landau were reportedly heavily involved in development, aiming for authenticity. The fatal irony is that in doing so, the film betrays the very spirit of Nebraska, an album born from solitude, honesty, and the courage to shut out all outside noise and simply create.