I try to go into movies knowing as little as possible. In this case, all I knew was that Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere was a movie about Bruce Springsteen, and that Jeremy Allen White was playing him. I expected a standard biopic cradle-to-stage kind of thing. What I got instead was something smaller, darker, and far more focused: a portrait of an artist teetering on the edge, lost somewhere between who he was and who he’s becoming.

The film zeroes in on the creation of Nebraska, one of Springsteen’s most haunting and stripped-down albums. It also happens to be one of my all-time favorite albums, so this lined up perfectly for me. It’s not about fame or glory, but the lonely, sometimes painful space between success and self. This is not Bohemian Rhapsody. It’s closer to Inside Llewyn Davis by way of The Iron Claw.

Jeremy Allen White is perfectly cast. Maybe typecast. The man does brooding and broken better than anyone working right now. Whether it’s The Bear, The Iron Claw, or now this, he excels at playing men who internalize everything until it nearly crushes them. His Springsteen isn’t loud or charming. He’s quiet, haunted, almost feral in his solitude. You can see the weight of his own songs pressing down on him. White’s portray is less imitation than adjacency.

There’s a line in the movie that stuck with me: “Quiet can get a little loud.” That’s exactly what the film captures. It’s sparse but heavy. Every silence carries meaning. Every stare feels like a confession. The movie hums with that same minimalist tension that made Nebraska itself so powerful.

This isn’t a fun movie. It’s not meant to be. It’s about guilt, fear, and the uneasy distance between the man you were and the one fame tries to make you. It’s about creating something so honest it almost destroys you in the process.

After watching, I checked Rotten Tomatoes: 61% from critics, 84% from audiences. That surprised me. Usually, this kind of dark, slow-burn introspection wins over critics more than crowds. But maybe that split says something about the movie itself. It’s a film that speaks quietly, maybe too quietly for some, but for those tuned into its frequency, it hits hard.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere isn’t a jukebox celebration or an easy watch. It’s a two-hour meditation on the loneliness of creation. And like the album it’s built around, it doesn’t need to shout to be heard.

However, I’m not sure who I would recommend this to outside of the Nebraska fans and the dark souls looking to lament with brethren in depression. I just happened to be both.