RIOTUS

Disclaimer: This reviewer grew up in “Springsteen Country” in the ‘80s, so he might be a tiny bit biased.

DrewNote: This is one for the Jersey kids.

I’m not sure you can understand Bruce Springsteen if you know nothing of Central Jersey. Not everyone believes this chunk of the Garden State exists; they’ll say it’s “down the Shore” and that’s about it. But no, it’s a patchwork of old Italian and Irish blue collar working class neighborhoods next to newcomers and old money alike, gentrified here and there but with lots of the old Jersey still to be found. And Bruce is quintessential Central Jersey.

It’s 1957 in Freehold, NJ. Young Bruce (Matthew Anthony Pellicano, Jr.) is waiting for his father, Douglas (Stephen Graham), to come home. When he does… the fear is shining in his eyes, echoed in every tremble of his preteen body.

Flash forward to 1981, the last concert of the fabled River tour. Bruce (Jeremy Allen White) is drenched in sweat and triumph alike. His manager and close friend, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), is ebullient—nobody is a bigger name in music right now than Bruce Springsteen. But when the stage lights go dark, the Boss is adrift. Troubled and beset by anxiety, he doesn’t know what to do next, even as the label demands another album packed with hits.

And what comes next is Nebraska.

Jeremy Allen White embodies Bruce in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere with a confidence and skill other actors can only envy. He brings the raw dichotomy of the Boss to life, a man who is truly alive when in front of the fans but struggles when he’s not. Bruce Springsteen’s complexity is revealed like a sculptor working in marble, each cut showing something new as the final image takes form, and White is truly a master at work here, capturing Bruce’s gravelly working-class cadence and long, thoughtful pauses while working out lyrics or his fraught past.

But just as Bruce wouldn’t be who and where he is without Jon Landau, White’s work shines in partnership with Jeremy Strong. Bruce’s manager watches as his friend battles his demons, unsure how to help and wracked by this helplessness; he suffers alongside Bruce as this album, which might be an unhealthy obsession, consumes Springsteen’s life even as future hits like “Born in the USA” sit on the shelf.

Odessa Young, as Faye, holds up a mirror to Bruce’s lowkey self-harming behaviors. A young mom with an adorable daughter, working as a waitress while waiting for something better, she’s an amalgam of several women Bruce dated unsuccessfully. Here, she’s a signpost, showing how far down a bad path he’s heading.

And Stephen Graham, an Emmy-winner for his dazzling Netflix series Adolescence, nearly steals the movie as Bruce’s troubled, all-but-broken father, Douglas. His dull stares and bursts of rage manage to startle and terrify… and make viewers glad they weren’t little Bruce.

Scott Cooper, who directed from his own adaptation of the 2023 book by Warren Zanes, doesn’t go for flashy “moment of crisis/moment of truth” biopic cliches. This is a deep, well-paced character study that follows Bruce coming to terms, through music, with what’s haunted him his entire life. We see in black and white flashbacks how bad it got (which was pretty bad) and ride along with the Boss through 1981 into 1982, when Nebraska will be released—with no tour, no press, no singles, not even Springsteen’s face on the album cover. It was a hard road getting there and we’re along for the ride.

Finally, as someone who grew up near those streets and later went to the Stone Pony and the bygone Asbury Park carousel, to Freehold, and places in between… well, it was quite the ride down Memory Lane. I’m glad it was in the service of such a strong movie.

This isn’t just for Bruce fans, folks, trust me.

We’re giving this one nine Asbury Park carousels out of ten.