Eschewing the conventional rock biopic format — in which a significant portion of a performer’s life is covered in flashback, usually from the moment of a pivotal career milestone (see Walk the Line or, for a less serious take, Walk Hard) — Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere defies expectation.
It zeroes in on a specific year, starting in 1981 on the final night of Bruce Springsteen’s The River tour, during which he achieved his greatest success to date. Not surprisingly, his record label wanted to strike while the iron was hot, but 32-year-old Bruce (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) was uncomfortable with all that fame and still grappling with some heavy, unresolved issues involving his father. So, he decided to retreat to a house in Colts Neck, N.J., to chill out for a bit. As he tells his longtime friend and manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, Succession) early on here, “I just need to get home and slow things down a little.”
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Martin's Musings 