Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere - A Review: Born to Run in Place

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This bio-pic starts strong but finishes much too weakly to be a worthwhile venture. It could have, and should have, been significantly better.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, written and directed by Scott Cooper, is a bio-pic of sorts that chronicles both Bruce Springsteen’s struggle to make his critically-acclaimed 1982 album Nebraska and his battle with depression.

The film, which stars Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, hit theatres on October 24, 2025 and is now available to stream on Hulu…which is where I watched it.

When I was growing up my first real introduction to Bruce Springsteen was his massively popular 1984 album Born in the USA. I was not fan of that song in particular, and the album in general…so much so that I wrote off Springsteen altogether. He seemed terribly uncool (something that was important to me as a young teen) and the jingoism of Born in the USA was repulsive to me on its face.

Then about a decade later a buddy of mine had an extra ticket to a Springsteen concert and gave it to me for free…and who am I to turn down a free concert ticket…so I went.

The concert was Springsteen without the E Street band and was part of the tour promoting his solo albums Human Touch and Lucky Town – two albums I didn’t think much of if I ever thought of them at all. Our seats were elevated and essentially behind the stage…which didn’t seem ideal….then Springsteen hit the stage.

It is a testament to Springsteen’s talent and skill that he turned a malevolent anti-fan like me into a big fan over the course of one concert. I understood by the end of that night what all the fuss was about regarding Springsteen…and why he was called The Boss.

Since then, I have essentially gone back and experienced his early albums for the first time, and even saw Born in the USA from a different perspective and liked it. It also helped hearing the stripped-down acoustic version of the song which is deliciously caustic in regards to its intentions.

After having spent the last three decades appreciating and absorbing The Boss’ work, I have come to the conclusion that he is one of the most essential American singer-songwriters of his era and maybe of any era.

Which brings us to Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

This film is a bit of an odd duck, as the first half of it is as ambitious and audacious as any music bio-pic you’ll find, but the second half of it is so painfully trite and pedestrian it feels like an after-school special.

Let’s start with the good. The film’s first half deals with Springsteen fighting to keep his artistic integrity amidst pressure from his record label and struggling to make a stripped down, dark album that satiates his artistic urges.

Watching a film attempt to dramatize an iconic artists’ life by getting into his actual creative process and seeing what inspired him and propelled his work, is something that doesn’t fit nicely into the music bio-pic formula…and that’s what makes this choice so bold and brazen.

This is easily the best part of the film, as we see Springsteen research a murder in Nebraska that piques his interest and sparks his imagination and artistry. This is the less glamourous part of The Boss being The Boss. No fanfare, no nonsense, just him, his guitar, paper, pencil and long hours.

The album he eventually records at home on a four-track becomes his iconic work Nebraska…but he has to get the record label on board first, and maybe re-record in the studio…and this is when the film shifts.

The second half of the film is not about creation or artistry, it is about Springsteen dealing with his family, his fame, and his depression…all standard fare for a music bio-pic….and none of it is very compelling.

The decision to all of a sudden make the movie about Bruce’s struggle with depression is a bizarre creative choice as it scuttles any momentum and it feels entirely unearned. Also unearned is a romance with a local Jersey girl that feels random and lifeless.

The ending of the film has a written epilogue that is reminiscent of an after-school special where the viewer is informed that everything worked out for Bruce as he becomes a massive superstar and he essentially overcomes his depression with help from professionals. Yikes.

That epilogue reminded me of the textual epilogue at the end of Clint Eastwood’s 1988 film Bird – a biopic about jazz legend Charlie Parker that features a brilliant performance from Forest Whitaker. Bird is overall a pretty bad movie, and that is only accentuated by the epilogue which – in true Regan era sloganeering form, tells us that unlike the drug-addled Charlie Parker who died at 34, supporting-character “Red Rodney is actively performing today, providing an example of musical excellence and a drug-free life.” Thanks, Nancy Reagan.

Deliver Me from Nowhere didn’t need its textual epilogue…at all. It should have just let sleeping dogs lie but it couldn’t, probably because Bruce Springsteen had control of what could, and couldn’t be in the movie. That is unfortunate because when it happens the much-needed hard edges of drama and artistry get softened and rounded.

Jeremy Allen White does a decent enough job as Springsteen throughout. He is hamstrung by the script which in the second half is a bit too melo-dramatic than it should be.

I’ve not watched White’s popular series The Bear, but I can see why he is as popular as he is because he has a screen presence that is appealing and a certain magnetism that serves him well. I thought overall his work as Springsteen was not spectacular but, ironically, workman like.

Jeremy Strong plays Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau – who is a legend in the music industry. Strong is a very good actor, but he isn’t given much to do in this role. He, like White…is just fine in the role but not great.

The biggest takeaway I had from the performances of both White and Strong was that this movie had the opportunity to be great…but it never coalesced into what it could have, and maybe should have, been.

A lot of the blame for the film’s failing lies with writer/director Scott Cooper. Cooper has had a strange career. His first film was Crazy Heart (2009), which won Jeff Bridges his best Actor Oscar. Pretty impressive. His next film was Out of the Furnace (2013) – which despite a stacked cast bombed at the box office and was critically forgotten.

In 2015 Cooper delivered the film Black Mass, about the life and times of Whitey Bulger, and while I like that film, it underperformed and underwhelmed. Since then, he’s made Hostiles (2017), Antlers (2021) and The Pale Blue Eye (2022), none of which made much of a dent in the culture despite their top-notch casts.

Cooper’s biggest issue with Deliver Me from Nowhere is that he doesn’t commit to the arthouse version of the film where it is just about Springsteen trying to write and record Nebraska. Trying to round out that story with flaccid familial drama and cookie-cutter mental health stuff feels like an attempt to make the movie more commercially viable…which ironically is what I think made it less commercially viable.

Speaking of which, Deliver Me from Nowhere did not do well at the box office, making $45 million on a $55 million budget. It also did not receive any award nominations or critical praise…which pretty much is in line with what happened to the rest of Scott Cooper’s filmography.

Ultimately, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a harmless and pretty forgettable movie which has moments of artistic insight that if further pursued could have led to brilliance….but t’was not to be.

I’d also like to say one thing about Springsteen himself. I think you’d be much better served going back and listening to his entire discography, including the outtakes and live material, than watching this movie. I also think you’d be better served watching his Broadway one man show, Springsteen on Broadway, on Netflix, and reading his autobiography Born to Run…both of which are excellent.

One final matter regarding the The Boss that I feel needs be said, and it’s this. Bruce Springsteen is an icon and avatar for the working class in this country, the white working class in particular…despite by his own admission, having never had a real job in his entire life.

What bothers me about Springsteen nowadays is that he has more money than he’ll ever know what to do with….and his kids, his grandkids, and all the way to his great-great-great grandkids, will never have to work a day in their lives if they don’t want to. And yet…Springsteen charges the most exorbitant and outrageous prices for his concert tickets…essentially forcing his hard-working fans to either shell out a huge chunk of their savings/credit or miss out on seeing their blue-collar savior.

This bothers me no end. It bothers me because I want to believe that Bruce Springsteen is the real deal…that he gets it and gets working class people and understands the struggle. But then he gets greedy, and reveals himself to be just another pompous, self-serving, boomer shit-lib prick who is only playing the working-class thing as a shtick to separate fools from their money – (consider me among the fools).

I feel the same about another band of greedy boomer shit-libs, U2, who have forever and ever been preaching about their political and spiritual righteousness in one form or another, and lots of people…like me for instance…have fallen for it. U2 are calculated con-men playing the role of concerned citizens. They don’t believe in anything but their own fame and fortune. This is why they spoke out about South African apartheid in the 1980s, but refused to pick sides in the struggle in Northern Ireland (only waving a white flag)…because one of the sides in that struggle was the largest market they needed to break in to…England. They couldn’t make a moral and ethical stand over civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland because that would alienate the audience they needed...but it cost U2 nothing to make a stand regarding South Africa. This is also why U2 refused to speak out against apartheid Israel and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank…they wouldn’t dare stand up to the powerful Zionist moneyed interests in Israel and the U.S. Nevermind the bands use of tax havens while demanding working Americans and the Irish pay for their foreign policy moral preening projects.

Now that the scales have fallen from my eyes, I see U2 and Bono and The Boss not just as bullshit artists but genuinely malignant and nefarious actors in the public sphere. That’s not to say that their music sucks and to discard all of the things they’ve created…it’s just to say that it’s difficult to take what they say – be it in the world or in their music, at face value once you’ve seen who they really are behind the mask.

The truth is that this entire topic is worthy of a much deeper conversation, but that conversation is for another day, but I thought I’d just throw these thoughts out there as a little appetizer.

As for Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere…if you are a Springsteen fan you will probably watch it regardless of what I say, and you’ll probably be a bit underwhelmed by it just like me. If you’re not a Springsteen fan, the reality is that you really have no need to watch this movie at all.

©2026

The Holdovers: A Review - A Happy Humbug for the Holidays

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. Not a great film, but a good enough one. It’s an exceedingly safe movie that boasts quality performances from a terrific cast.

The Holdovers, directed by Alexander Payne and starring Paul Giamatti, tells the story of a teacher, student and cook who are stuck together at a tony New England prep school over the Christmas holiday break in 1970.

I consider myself a marginal fan of director Alexander Payne. I’ve loved some of his movies, like About Schmidt and Nebraska. I’ve liked some of his movies, like Sideways and Election. And I’ve loathed some of his movies, like Downsizing and The Descendants.

The Holdovers, Payne’s first film since the box office and critical bomb Downsizing in 2017, was in theatres at the end of October and is now streaming on Peacock.

The film, set at the fictional prep school Barton, tells the story of Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a stern and curmudgeonly academic who attended the school in his youth and has taught there for the vast majority of his adulthood.

Hunham is just like Robin Williams’ iconic character John Keating in Dead Poets Society…if Keating had a wall-eye, bad body odor and was despised by both students and colleagues alike. Hunham’s students would only stand and recite “O Captain! My Captain!” if they were about to frag him.

Hunham is, much to his chagrin, tasked with taking care of a rag tag group of students who, for a variety of reasons, have nowhere to go over the Christmas break. One of these students, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), is abandoned at the lasty minute by his mother and step-father for the holidays.

After a twist and turn of events, the only people left at Barton for holiday break are the sad-sack trio of Hunham, Tully, and the school’s head chef Mary Lamb (DaVine Joy Randolph). The one thing these three all have in common though is that they’re all in various stages of grief, such as denial, anger and depression.

The tone throughout The Holdovers is one of melancholy mixed with a cloying sentimentality. Yes, there are some amusing bits and sequences, and Giamatti’s Harvard educated Hunham has a quick, erudite and eviscerating wit, but for the most part this is a straight forward, throw-back, adult dramedy.

The Holdovers is a return to scale if not entirely to form for Alexander Payne. I thought the film was…fine. It isn’t great. But it is good…enough. It is proficiently made, well-acted, and entertaining. But what it lacks is…well…some sense of profundity, as it is incessantly safe above all else.

This is the type of film that would be perfect to sit down with extended family during the holidays and watch without anyone getting offended or upset or even all that excited. It is, as I said, above all else - safe…but it’s also entertaining and kept me captivated for its full two-hour-and-thirteen-minute running time.

The performances from the three main characters are all noteworthy. Giamatti, one of our better actors, is terrific as Hunham. The dialogue for Hunham is very well-written by screenwriter David Hemingson and is expertly delivered by Giamatti. Giamatti is very comfortable in the discomfort felt by the irascible egghead with the literal googly-eyes who smells like fish. He trudges through Hunham’s dramatic odyssey with his usual aplomb.

Dominic Sessa is a discovery as Angus Tully. This is Sessa’s first movie and while he is a bit rough-around-the-edges he brings a vitality and adolescent angst that is impossible to fake.

The big revelation though is Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb. Randolph’s character Mary is the least well-written, but she fills the spaces with a weight that speaks volumes. What impressed me the most about Randolph though is that she absolutely, but subtly, nails her Boston accent, which is something that such luminaries as Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson and Julianne Moore have embarrassingly butchered (Hanks on multiple occasions).

When I have loved Alexander Payne’s films, like About Schmidt and Nebraska, it’s because they have had an acerbic and wickedly cutting and subversive nature to them. It also helps that those films star Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern respectively, giving some of the best performances of their careers.

When Payne loses me is when sentimentality and shtick come to the fore, like in The Descendants and Downsizing. (I also thought George Clooney and Matt Damon, respectively, were actively awful in both of those movies)

The Holdovers has a mix of both the best and the worst of Payne. It’s filled with sentimentality, but also features a great actor, Giamatti, swimming in a thick sea of acerbity (much like he did in Sideways).

It also has some shticky moments that disappoint and irritate. Like when Hunham chases Tully through the school, which was very reminiscent of a dreadfully bad sequence in The Descendants where George Clooney goofily runs up and down a long winding road.

But despite those contrived moments and disappointing bits, I found myself buying in to The Holdovers almost entirely because this type of movie – a smart, adult dramedy, which used to be so common in the 1970’s, is so rare nowadays.

Well-written, well-acted small comedy-dramas made by quality directors featuring skilled performers, are unfortunately few and far between in today’s Hollywood. Which is maybe why The Holdovers is being so well-received by critics and audiences alike.

If you have Peacock, I definitely recommend you watch The Holdovers, and if you don’t have Peacock, they’re always having one-week free trials so sign up for a free week and watch the movie and then cancel.

Ultimately, I enjoyed The Holdovers despite its various shortcomings and lack of artistic ambition, and frankly, I think you will too. It’s a safe movie and it definitely won’t change your life…but it also won’t disappoint.

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©2024