Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere opened in multiplexes over the weekend following a worldwide publicity campaign, thorough fact-checks by the media, the official release of the fabled Electric Nebraska sessions, and a filming process that played out almost daily on social media thanks to Springsteen’s regular presence on the set. “Jeremy Allen White was very, very tolerant of me the days that I would appear on the set,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone earlier the year. “I said to him, ‘Look, anytime I’m in the way, just give me the look and I’m on my way home.’”
There’s still a long way to go, but the movie got off to an underwhelming start at the box office by pulling in just $16.1 million across the globe. And with a $55 million price tag, it may be an uphill ride for the film to eke out a profit. It’s very possible that positive word-of-mouth will keep it in theaters until the end of the holiday season, and both Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, as manager Jon Landau, might pick up major award nominations. If that happens, the movie will surely get a second chance at box office life.
Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper, has a 60 percent approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, meaning that the critical consensus was all over the place. The majority of critics were impressed by the performances of both Jeremys, but some were underwhelmed by the decision to place the entire movie into a narrow window of time between 1981 and 1982, the flashbacks to Springsteen’s childhood, and the emphasis on Springsteen’s mental state and private life as opposed to his music. Here’s a look at what some of the top critics thought.
David Fear of Rolling Stone: “There is also, of course, the 100 million-dollar question: What will Springsteen fans think of this? Some will find it dour to a fault. We don’t blame them. Others will wish it had more sequences like the one in the Power Station, where Bruce and the band tear into “Born in the U.S.A.” and heed Landau’s corny demand to “burn it down.” We don’t blame them either, though despite the movie’s flaws, what Cooper has given audiences here is way more compelling than a live-action greatest-hits compilation.”
Manohla Dargis of the New York Times: “White, who’s best known from the FX series The Bear, doesn’t look like Springsteen and smartly, he and Cooper don’t try to fake a resemblance. Much like the man he plays, though, White has tremendous charisma and the kind of endlessly interesting face whose rough beauty and asymmetry draws you to him. His Bruce spends a fair amount of time by himself, and doesn’t speak the language of the therapeutically schooled. That means White needs to express the seemingly inexpressible, even as the character is finding the songs that will voice what he can’t, which the actor does with delicacy. In a movie filled with music that says so much to so many, some of the most memorable moments are the quieter ones, the lonely silences that at times separate Bruce from the world but also eventually help him return to it.”
Bilge Ebiri of Vulture: “Everybody who makes a musical biopic these days (or really any kind of biopic) seems determined to try and do it in as un-biopic-y a fashion as possible — which in turn makes the films seem even more like biopics. Pushing against the genre’s supposed tropes, Deliver Me From Nowhere limits itself to a brief period and focuses largely on the creation of one rather odd album. But it still can’t help delving into the childhood flashbacks, the busted romantic relationship — the whole smorgasbord of conventions. At its best, the film gives us a sincere look at the creative process and reveals it to be a sad, scary, at times uncontrollable and destructive thing. Just for that alone, it’s worth seeing.”
Peter Debruge of Variety: “As Nebraska comes together, we realize this wasn’t pop music Springsteen was making, but something deeply cynical about the country Ronald Reagan and the mainstream media believed he was cheerleading. Rather, he delivered a downbeat ballad about all the ways the American dream had fallen short. This is how such unvarnished truth found its way to the people. The rest — what it represented to every soul it touched — is for you to sort out.”
Richard Brody of the New Yorker: “As for the core of the story, the making and release of Nebraska, Springsteen is both intrinsically absorbing in its contours and rushed and smudged in its details. Scene after scene exists not to observe action attentively or to reveal aspects of character but to drop pieces of information that add up to a plot: Jon encountering an executive who expects Bruce’s next album to be a big hit; Bruce idly plucking his guitar and tapping the cover of a book of O’Connor’s stories. Cooper gives far more attention to the delivery of the multitrack tape deck by an associate named Mikey (Paul Walter Hauser) than to Bruce’s efforts to record his songs with it. There’s very little of Bruce singing at home—only enough for evidentiary purposes, and not filmed with any sense of fascination or wonder. There is no sense of what Bruce is actually looking for while he’s performing, how he worked out each song, how he added the additional instrumentation (all of which he himself performed) in his instant home studio. He asks Mikey to help him record, but their work together in that crucial process is left out.”
Kyle Smith of the Wall Street Journal: “Written and directed by Scott Cooper, the film does a disservice to the windswept austerity of the record with clunky writing and cheesy directorial flourishes, such as having the Boss keep encountering himself as a boy (Matthew Anthony Pellicano) recoiling from an abusive father (Stephen Graham). Mr. White’s tortured-soulful act is becoming tiresome, and Jeremy Strong turns in an equally overwrought performance as Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, who is meant to be a confidant but comes across as merely a sycophant. The film devolves into a puddle of tears in its final act.”
Chris Richards of the Washington Post: “With Deliver Me From Nowhere, director-screenwriter Scott Cooper has chosen to elongate a particularly shadowy chapter of Springsteen’s creative life — much of it based on a book of the same title by Warren Zanes — resulting in a slow, moody, occasionally ponderous film about the nonlinear act of music making. Yes, there are a few reenactments of screamy concerts and stressful studio sessions, but the most meaningful scenes unfold inside the tidy waterfront home where Springsteen recorded “Nebraska” on a four-track tape machine — if not inside the unknowable loneliness of a songwriter’s head. Springsteen was reportedly a frequent visitor on the set of Deliver Me From Nowhere — undoubtedly pumping up the extras, and presumably stressing out the actors. Was he there to be flattered? Is that what this whole thing is for? Over the past decade, Springsteen has written a generous memoir, then transposed it into a Broadway performance residency, then filmed it for a Netflix special, and now he’s back on tour, speaking righteous truth to power between songs. He must feel known, loved, understood. Why bother funneling all of that through Hollywood’s pomp and corniness into a movie that’s only half good? Nebraska was a triumph because it refused to fulfill anyone’s expectations. Deliver Me From Nowhere valorizes that decision while missing its chance to do the same.”
