'Deliver Me From Nowhere' review: Flat Bruce Springsteen biopic

Standing outside Asbury Park’s Stone Pony nightclub after a gig, Bruce Springsteen meets Faye Romano. He’s the local legend verging on rock stardom, she’s a winsome beauty too smart to admit that she’s a fan. They feel a spark. So how does The Boss seal the deal?

Looking into her eyes, he says, "I’m not sure I’d be a lot of fun."

No kidding. That early scene sets a tone for "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere," a biopic from writer-director Scott Cooper ("Crazy Heart") that focuses on the months Springsteen spent making "Nebraska," his 1982 album of doom-drenched folk songs. At the movie’s center is a solid Jeremy Allen White, whose Springsteen feels authentic both on and off a stage, while around the edges are rich details about how his willfully non-commercial album ever made it to shelves. (Cooper’s screenplay is based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book "Deliver Me From Nowhere.") By matching the album’s downbeat tone, though, "Springsteen" does something seemingly impossible: It turns one of rock's most electrifying performers into a bummer.

As he promised Faye (a composite character that feels quite real thanks to Odessa Young), Springsteen is indeed not much fun. Not when closing his 1981 tour with "Born to Run" at a Cincinnati arena, not when buying his first new car (a sexy, sinister Chevy Camaro Z28), not when idling outside the now-rotting home where he spent his childhood with a semi-abusive father and long-suffering mother (Stephen Graham and Gaby Hoffman, mostly in standard-issue flashbacks). And certainly not when holing up in a dingy apartment in Colts Neck, New Jersey, where he absorbs Terrence Malick’s 1973 movie, "Badlands," the stories of Flannery O’Connor and the harrowing music of the art-punk duo Suicide. Now thoroughly depressed, Springsteen pours his soul into grim songs like "Highway Patrolman" and "My Father’s House" on a home-recorded cassette.

A possibly bigger bringdown is Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau, Springsteen’s manager. The film wants to portray Landau as an unwavering pillar of support, but Strong’s performance — clipped words, monotone voice, blank eyes — suggests something more like a zombie. One or both of these men are on screen at almost all times, which turns "Springsteen" into a double dose of mopey masculinity. The lively E Street Band barely exists here (though you might spot Brian Chase, of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, drumming as Max Weinberg).

The how of "Nebraska," which involves Marc Maron as fast-thinking producer Chuck Plotkin, is more interesting than the why, which is never fully explained. It may not be explainable at all; childhood trauma is never simple, and artists can’t always clearly connect their own brilliant dots. In his memoir, "Born to Run," Springsteen devotes just eight paragraphs to the making of "Nebraska," listing the aforementioned influences and adding one that perhaps only he could hear: "the flat, dead voice that drifted through my town on the nights I couldn’t sleep."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com