Unless you are under eighteen as you are reading this review, chances are, you’re very familiar with the monolithic name and reputation of singer/bandleader Bruce Springsteen. The man music (meaning the music biz) has come to know as “The Boss” has been revered unendingly for decades. Some 21albums under his belt (along with his almost as famous backing group The E Street Band), Oscar wins, Grammy wins and too many accolades to count, Springsteen has been churning out beloved rock music since 1973. His tours are the stuff of legend, shows often in the three-to-four hour range and have routinely featured guest appearances by everyone from Tom Morello to Eddie Vedder to Patti Smith. Deservedly so, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, follows in the typically successful motif of biopics chronicling an artist or band firmly cemented in America pop culture’s legendary stature. Though unlike recently successful films in that spirt such as A Complete Unknown about Bob Dylan, Walk the Line about Johnny Cash and Bohemian Rhapsody about Queen which largely told a longer story detailing the rise and full ascent of those artists’ career (leaning heavily on the incredible songbook each amassed over decades of work), Deliver Me From Nowhere instead chooses to focus on one small slice of The Boss’s career, namely the period between 1981 and 1982 where he recorded his famed album Nebraska. It is an incisive and focused look at a not-so-halcyon time in the life of an artist, that does not lean other than a little bit on the voluminous songbook that the artist has become famous for.

We enter the story right as Springsteen is finishing his last concert date for his successful album, The River. Jeremy Allen White, right in the midst of his superstar breakout on the back of his starring role in the genius show The Bear, plays Bruce Springsteen in a raucous performance of “Born to Run.” We meet his manager Jon Landau who is played by Jeremy Strong (Succession, The Big Short) right as he informs him that he plans to decamp to an isolated part of New Jersey for rest. It’s not long before the label starts wondering what’s next wanting to capitalize on the runaway fame of Springsteen. Springsteen instead decides to slow everything to a crawl having his guitar tech Mike Batlan (Paul Walter Hauser, who seems to be everywhere in movies now) bring along a then, stunning innovation in recording technology, a home Teac 4-track recording system.

The piece shifts between three different gears from there, a sub-plot romance involving a woman he meets at a local show named Faye Romano (Odessa Young), flashback montages showing a young Springsteen navigating a difficult childhood with his mother and father and adult Springsteen being inspired to write and work out the songs that become Nebraska. Director and writer Scott Cooper famed for the wonderful film Crazyheart adapts from the book Deliver Me From Nowhere by Warren Zanes, takes this film through a melancholic look at the time that leads up to a modern American masterpiece. The film starts on the slower side, seemingly a bit aimless at first, but it really comes together the further it goes and as it arrives at the finish. It ends strong, and it’s quite clear what the filmmakers and Springsteen himself were going for.

White has a predictably strong turn portraying Springsteen in this picture, taking long moments deep in thought to convey the majority of the emotion on display here. He also sings his character’s parts and plays the guitar parts too, so it holistically feels like a performance and not a pantomime. The film centers on his efforts to wrench this piece of work out to the world authentically and his manager Landau’s attempts to support his artist both in the face of a music industry that doesn’t understand, “slow down, be where you are” and in the technical challenges of rendering the album faithfully. Strong’s performance as Landau lands on the realization just as we the viewer do, that Springsteen’s wrestling match with this work is a deep reckoning with lifelong depression and generational trauma. Everyone present approaches the situation with compassion and determination, which is a thing that normally could not be said when people in our actual world suffer from extended depression. The only real issue with any of the main performances—and this will probably vary from viewer to viewer whether they care–is that White is wearing brown color contacts that change his natural turquoise blue eyes to look more in alignment with Springsteen. This is noteworthy only because most fans are used to seeing long, drawn out ponderings from White in The Bear and it is disorienting to see him with brown eyes when you know that’s not his eye color. Again, some may not mind this at all.

Springsteen’s romance with Romano adds a layer of emotional lightness amidst the otherwise somber affair, though for you historians or fact checkers out there, keep in mind that the character of Faye Romano is a fictional invention for this story, somewhat of a composite creation of different women Springsteen dated during this time period. Unsurprisingly great in his time on screen is Stephen Graham (Adolescence) who portrays Springsteen’s father Douglas in all flashback and current-time scenes. Graham is having a moment behind the recent breakout success of Adolescence and does a phenomenal job capturing the tortured heart of a character that goes through many evolutions before the film is done. It’s wonderful to see Graham’s success after seeing his role as Tommy in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch over two decades ago.

The film brings these elements together not making an evil record label be the antagonist, so much as ,”What does it really take for the soup to be ready?” It requires a patience of the viewer, one that the audience reception alone will tell if viewers are up for, but it is a super worthy journey as it gets more to the heart of the matter as to what it takes to make something great rather than the applause line that many of these music-centered biopics lately have focused on. You get to see how some monster hits like “Born in the U.S.A.” get made, but great even as they are, temporarily get put on the shelf in favor of what the moment really requires.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a courageous take at one sliver of history from a world-famous artist. It may not give the fist-shaking mania that a conventional Bruce Springsteen concert might, but it is a well rendered and thoughtful look at the creative process, depression and generational trauma. Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong and Stephen Graham all do fantastic jobs in their respective roles and the story has a rewarding conclusion making the road traveled well worth it.