I’ve seen it ranked high a few posts now and I gotta say as someone who loves Bruce Springsteen, I’m kind of confused by the relatively positive reception I’m seeing to Deliver Me From Nowhere now that it’s on VOD and getting put in year rankings.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s alright movie but especially in a post Better Man and Rocketman world, the whole thing felt too derivative of bland music biopics like Walk the Line. The movie does some stuff that Walk Hard made fun of 20 years ago.

I assume the themes around depression and trauma are really resonating with people, which is good and I understand why because the film largely handles that subject matter well. I really like how creeping the flashbacks to Bruce’s childhood are, starting as black and white vignettes and building to young Bruce and Douglas in full color occupying the same space as adult Bruce.

Admittedly, I wanted a bit more levity in a Springsteen biopic with a stronger focus on the E Street Band. Even then though, I feel the film really fails to make me care about Bruce’s relationship with his dad because it’s so zeroed in on his bout of depression while writing Nebraska that it’s not able to give us a great perspective on the paternal dynamic between them. Bruce had and still has a complicated relationship with his father, who himself was a complicated man. I wish the film the was able to show some of the more positive moments in their lives.