What I know about Bruce Springsteen wouldn’t fill the back of a postage stamp. This follows Bruce Springsteen as he is writing an album with some moments from his childhood and a romance thrown in for good measure. Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce, Jeremy Strong plays Jon Landau, Paul Walter Hauser tries to make us forget The Naked Gun playing Mike, Odessa Young plays love interest Faye and Stephen Graham earns himself an Oscar nomination for playing Bruce’s father Douglas. The story takes place just as he is about to be a global superstar and we get Born in the USA and Nebraska and other songs.
It’s a great performance from Jeremy Allen White. I don't know if he played or sung before this film but if he didn’t then he put in the effort to make this sound genuine. Even when he’s not singing he does a great job of making Bruce sound tortured by his own doubt and quest for perfection. As I mentioned earlier, this is an Oscar worthy performance from Stephen Graham who is probably in the film for less than 10 minutes in total and yet delivers a very powerful performance. The scene at the end where he asks Bruce to sit on his knee and they have a lovely father/son bonding moment was genuinely one of the highlights of the film. Jeremy Strong delivers an odd performance but the character of Jon was a nice bit of support for Bruce especially towards the end when he starts becoming distant.
The only real issue with the film is the sub plot with Faye. I don't know how true her story in this is but it would have been nice to have something of a nice conclusion instead of walking into the sunset. Another (very minor) issue is that I could have done with some more time. I don't know what they could have added to the story but I just wanted to spend time in this world and felt like it made me feel happier even though there are sad moments every so often.
Given that I knew very little about Bruce Springsteen, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations and I suspect that fans of the Boss might react differently but I genuinely liked this movie. I thought all the performances were really good, the story was really good (bar Faye’s ending) and I felt like I understood Springsteen. The only film that this is comparable to is A Complete Unknown which I would say is an inferior film to this one. I felt a little underwhelmed with that film but I definitely didn’t feel like that when I walked out of this film. It might come across as a bit like Oscar bait but I think that it warranted because this is the sort of the thing they eat up at the awards. Well worth seeing even if like me you dont know about the man or the music, you will definitely be educated by the end of the two hours.
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