Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

A subdued Springsteen story that trades fireworks for feeling

Jeremy Allen White makes for a controlled and quietly compelling Springsteen. The scenes of him performing on stage or working in the studio are as affecting as those moments where he simply stares out across the quiet.

Granted, biopics aren’t created equal — after all, the lives they’re based on rarely are. Still, it’s starting to feel repetitive watching yet another dark-haired, emotionally unavailable musician fall in love with a blonde who spends half the film pining over him.

In the closing epigraph, we’re told that Springsteen suffered from depression, which, sure, there are signs in the movie that point to the likeness even if it isn’t explicitly mentioned. What makes you unsure are the flashbacks peppered throughout. Shot in black and white to give a real ’50s feel’ they touch on Springsteen’s fraught relationship with his father, played by the scarily good Stephen Graham. It’s these scenes that have you searching for a link between past and present that isn’t really there – at least in this chapter of Springsteen’s life.

I’ll leave it to the real Springsteen fans to decide if Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, feels authentic, but the movie is fine. It may not win any awards, but it has the heart that was missing from Timothée Chalamet’s A Complete Unknown, which charted Bob Dylan’s break away from folk music.

Watched during BFI London Film Festival 2025