NEED TO KNOW
Movie critics’ first reactions to Jeremy Allen White’s portrayal of Bruce Springsteen are pouring in!
White’s new movie Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere made its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday, Aug. 29, providing Springsteen fans and moviegoers alike with their first glimpses at The Bear star White, 34, as legendary rock musician Springsteen, now 75, circa 1982.
The Boss himself was in attendance at the Colorado premiere, posing with White and Deliver Me from Nowhere’s cast before later taking the stage as the crowd chanted, “Bruce!”
Many of the first reviews from the festival heap praise on White’s performance. Deadline called White “utterly convincing on every count,” adding that he “gets to the essence of the man without copying him, but the transformation is nothing less than stunning, reminding me of what Sissy Spacek was able to accomplish playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter, even as, like White, the legend she was playing was very much alive and watching.”
20th Century Studios ; Mark and Colleen Hayward/Getty
The Wrap praised White’s singing, which is mixed with some of Springsteen’s vocals, adding that White’s “hangdog charisma is just right.”
White “plays the rugged character, dressed in his uniform of plaid flannel shirt, jeans and leather jacket, as a man physically burdened by his demons,” The Hollywood Reporter’s review reads.
The Shameless alum delivers a performance that is “steeped in a truth so natural and unforced that by the end of the film you almost forget that he’s playing someone else,” according to Indiewire’s B- review.
Also spotted in the audience at the Telluride premiere were Oprah Winfrey, Adam Sandler, Margot Robbie and Alexander Skarsgard.
Deliver Me from Nowhere “chronicles the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 Nebraska album when he was a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggling to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past,” according to an official synopsis for the movie.
Jeremy Strong and Paul Walter Hauser costar in the movie as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau and a guitar technician, respectively. “Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom, the album marked a pivotal time in his life and is considered one of his most enduring works—a raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe,” the synopsis adds.
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20th Century Studios
The movie is written and directed by Scott Cooper and based on author Warren Zanes’ book of the same name. Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Gaby Hoffman, Marc Maron and David Krumholtz also costar in the film.
After Telluride, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere will premiere at the New York Film Festival in September and release in theaters Oct. 24.
