The first reviews have landed for new Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, with critics largely praising the effort.
The film charts the period in The Boss’s life where he recorded his sixth studio album Nebraska, with The Bear star Jeremy Allen White portraying the musician.
Following the premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, the initial critics’ verdicts have praised the star’s performance, even while some have suggested the film itself is a bit flawed.
Deadline said that White is “utterly convincing on every count” and “gets to the essence of the man without copying him”, further calling the transformation “nothing less than stunning”.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is the real deal, an intelligent, deliberately paced journey into the soul of an artist,” critic Peter Hammond added.
The actor was further called “simply awesome” by The Playlist, who described the film “as unorthodox a biopic as you can imagine for a major studio release in 2025, even if director Scott Cooper makes choices that hinder Nowhere from being a truly great film”.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere isn’t just another assembly-line biopic — and that’s a blessing — in that it focuses not on the blue-collar troubadour’s glory days, but on the darkest chapter of his career,” added Variety.
The Hollywood Reporter suggested that Deliver Me From Nowhere was more for die-hard Springsteen fans, noting: “If you’re looking to celebrate the anthemic hits of blue-collar New Jersey’s favorite son, this highly personal movie might not meet your requirements.
“But serious fans — particularly those who admire the lo-fi 1982 album Nebraska — should connect with the intimate drama.”
However, IndieWire was less enthusiastic, arguing: “Cooper’s film wants to be the Nebraska of rock biopics, but it lacks the finesse to retain the essence of that sound when transferring it into the body of a commercial biopic.”
Alongside White, the film stars Succession‘s Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s manager and producer Jon Landau, Adolescence‘s Stephen Graham as his father Douglas, and The Staircase‘s Odessa Young as love interest Faye Romano.
Springsteen himself recently spoke about why he gave the “anti-biopic” film the green-light, explaining at Telluride: “I think we had a very specific idea – Scott [Cooper] had a very specific idea, particularly, of what we were gonna attempt to do.”