Love, Death, Nebraska: the Bruce Springsteen Movie

Promo for Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere!

Okay I put this one off for a sec but roughly three weeks ago Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere hit theaters (which is a stupid title in my opinion, should have dropped the 'Springsteen'.) It's a cut and dry biopic about Bruce Springsteen (played by Chicago's own Jeremy Allen White) writing Nebraska. If you don't know Nebraska, go listen to the album then come back to this, it's required reading.

This film is painfully generic, which sucks because Nebraska is a standout in Springsteen's discography. A complete departure from his previous work and a lot of his following. It follows a similar formula to A Complete Unknown so if you loved that, you'll also love this film probably. And not to say A Complete Unknown is a horrible film, it's fine, there are just better, more interesting Dylan biopics (I'm Not There.)

I guess a big gripe with this film is that it can't decide what it wants to focus on. Sure we hear the music but not enough for it to be a musician biopic. It focuses on Bruce's struggles with himself but, in my opinion, not enough to make it mean anything. The film views Bruce in a very boring way, a young rockstar who has just hit big coming home for the first time and trying to reconcile his new self with his childhood trauma. The issue is while the film follows Bruce it is also very concerned with what his manager Jon (played by Jeremy Strong) thinks as to clearly spell out every single topic in the film instead of putting the show don't tell work in.

Basically, it is a fine film, just nothing special and another cookie cutter genre film that leaves a lot to be desired. Soundtrack is great, though I do prefer the original Springsteen recordings.