Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)
Directed by Scott Cooper
Bruce Springsteen, a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggles to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past.
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26 films that influenced this film
What critics say influenced Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
A chance late-night TV viewing of Terence Malick’s Badlands (1973) sends him on a songwriting streak…
He reads Flannery O’Connor, watches 1973’s “Badlands,” and finds himself constantly ruminating on his turbulent childhood…
Cooper weaves into the story some of Nebraska’s legendary influences — including Terrence Malick’s 1973 debut Badlands, which obsessed Springsteen — but Deliver Me From Nowhere posits that it was the songwriter’s frayed relationship with his father that most shaped the album.
…his songwriting is taking creative inputs from darker sources, including the heartland crime movie Badlands…
Based on novelist Flannery O’Connor’s stories, Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973), and serial killer Charles Starkweather, Nebraska is a dark record about despair, isolation, and the seedy underbelly of America.
Terrence Malick’s Badlands and the real-life murder spree it was based on…
Director
James Mangold
Critics compare Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere to 2 of Mangold’s films.
Bob Dylan (James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown)…
2024 gave us Timothée Chalamet's safe but enjoyable Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown,"…
Just last year we had A Complete Unknown, which saw Timothée Chalamet portray Bob Dylan to great acclaim.
James Mangold and Timothėe Chalamet set a high bar for contemporary musical biography with last year’s “A Complete Unknown,” and Scott Cooper and Jeremy Allen White fall far short of it with “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.”
(I had this same issue with A Complete Unknown.)
…it just didn’t hit me the way James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown did…
The relative trickle of musical biopics that came down the cinematic pike at the beginning of the century (Ray, Walk the Line) has turned into a deluge.
…particularly a recent slew devoted to icons like Freddie Mercury (Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher’s Bohemian Rhapsody)…
…especially since the dreadful Bohemian Rhapsody earned nearly $1 billion worldwide and won four Oscars…
No es 'Bohemian Rhapsody', ni lo pretende.
The recent efforts have ranged from quite good (Rocketman, Elvis) to rather bad (Bohemian Rhapsody, Back to Black), with most efforts falling somewhere in the middle (One Love, Respect).
Though it didn’t garner as many awards (and box office) as BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY in 2018, it still racked up lots of critical raves (and even a Sag Best Actor for its star Timothee Chalomet).
Deliver Me From Nowhere hits UK and US theatres on October 24, hoping to follow in the footsteps of other recent music biopics such as Bohemian Rhapsody ($911m worldwide) and A Complete Unknown ($141m).
Elvis (Baz Luhrmann’s… umm… Elvis)…
The recent efforts have ranged from quite good (Rocketman, Elvis) to rather bad (Bohemian Rhapsody, Back to Black), with most efforts falling somewhere in the middle (One Love, Respect).
Deliver Me From Nowhere is the anti-Elvis, the Baz Luhrmann maximalist epic about Springsteen’s boyhood musical hero that covered all the major beats of the King’s life, but rarely slowed down long enough to let the audience just sit with Elvis and truly get to know him.
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While there’s always the occasional film like Better Man that finds creativity within standard templates…
“Better Man” is a flawed movie, but it at least took visual and thematic chances in its depiction of Robbie Williams’ struggles so as to feel fresh, even as it retread the familiar rock star problems.
The decision to tie Bruce’s struggles with fame and creativity to his childhood trauma recalls another recent biopic, Michael Gracey’s Better Man, which explores the rise, fall, and rebirth of Robbie Williams alongside the star’s complicated relationship with his dad.
Director
Scott Cooper
Critics compare Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere to 3 of Cooper’s own films.
Al igual que en Crazy Heart o Out of the Furnace, el director demuestra afinidad por relatos de gente común…
Like Cooper’s earlier work in Crazy Heart and Hostiles, the film unfolds with deliberate pacing and an unhurried rhythm, favoring internal beats over dramatic crescendos.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is the most stylistically similar to his debut feature, “Crazy Heart,” in which Jeff Bridges played a fictionalized musician loosely inspired by Kris Kristofferson and Hank Thompson.
Writer/director Scott Cooper ("Crazy Heart," "The Pale Blue Eye")…
And, with credits under his belt like Crazy Heart, has shown a knack for thoughtful examinations of artistic characters.
…this intimate drama from director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart)…
Al igual que en Crazy Heart o Out of the Furnace, el director demuestra afinidad por relatos de gente común, por personajes atravesados por la melancolía, la culpa y la búsqueda de redención.
Cooper has become a low-key master of the grizzled, decent aura of America’s heartland, as he’s turned his focus to troubled figures of masculinity in films like “Out of the Furnace,” “Hostiles,” and “Black Mass.”
Like Cooper’s earlier work in Crazy Heart and Hostiles, the film unfolds with deliberate pacing and an unhurried rhythm, favoring internal beats over dramatic crescendos.
Cooper has become a low-key master of the grizzled, decent aura of America’s heartland, as he’s turned his focus to troubled figures of masculinity in films like “Out of the Furnace,” “Hostiles,” and “Black Mass.”
There was genuine intimacy and urgency in “Springsteen on Broadway,” the 2017 one-man show in which the Boss took a deep dive into his turbulent life and times in music.
…it’s been a while since I watched Springsteen on Broadway in an effort to lift myself out of a depressive spell…
…which also includes longtime collaborator Thom Zimny’s Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska Live on Blu-ray…
Tyhe movie takes a less conventional approach compared to other recent musical biopics about artists like Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown, or Bob Marley One Love.
Like Bob Marley: One Love did for one small part of Marley’s life, this film zeroes in on the lesser-known period between the albums Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A.
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Charles Laughton’s 1955 psychological thriller The Night of the Hunter (which Dutch Springsteen takes young Bruce to see in Deliver Me from Nowhere)…
…with explicit nods to Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” and Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter.”
It’s hard to talk about any music biopic without mentioning 2007’s “Walk Hard,” the parody film that exquisitely mocked the many motifs in which these dramatized movies constantly traffic.
…strays perilously close to Walk Hard territory…