'Road Diary' review: Bruce Springsteen is still The Boss

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Some 50 years since he became a superstar after telling the world that "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run," Bruce Springsteen remains a one-of-a-kind figure in modern music.

He's 75 years old. And yet, every night on his current tour with the E Street Band, he's still onstage for upward of three hours, his energy level at the highest possible point, performing a litany of hits, new songs and underrated gems, without so much as a moment of pause.

This might be expected of The Boss at this point, but it's not normal. It's remarkable.

Let's put it this way: This critic is significantly younger than 75, has seen Springsteen on five shows on this tour, and has left every single one more exhausted than the man himself.

Hulu's "Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band," the latest documentary from Springsteen's long-standing collaborator Thom Zimny, takes an in-depth look at just how the musician keeps doing this. It goes behind the scenes of the current tour, which began on Feb. 1, 2023, after a yearslong gap for Springsteen and the band that was made more extended than planned because of the pandemic.

MY SAY There's no reason to pretend: The person writing this review has already admitted spending enough money on Springsteen shows to practically need a second mortgage. So you're not getting the dispassionate take of a nonbeliever.

One should not expect a movie that asks too many hard questions. The words "ticket prices" are never mentioned. Bassist Garry Tallent makes a little joke about the slow tempos at the start of rehearsal, and a second one about a younger Springsteen's famous meticulousness, but that's about it as far as anything critical.

But my goodness, is it thrilling to go backstage with Bruce and the band, to watch the rehearsal process, to see the set list take shape and to better understand the story Springsteen wants to tell, a meditation on mortality becoming ever closer, which he says "brings a certain clarity of thought."

Zimny makes a series of smart choices that enhance the portrait of the band coming together in service of this vision. One key example: He carves out a sequence focusing on the key parts of the jazz-laden opus "Kitty's Back," brought out for the tour in no small part to give the enormously talented men and women backing Springsteen a chance to shine.

The filmmaker gives the portrait of the band on the road more shape by incorporating their memories of the earliest days of touring, which included roughing it on long drives, sleeping on couches and on tables, and playing some truly bizarre gigs.

Springsteen began most of the early shows on the tour with his song "No Surrender." Its presence at the top of the set might have been a comment on the return to this sort of communal experience after the dark pandemic days of no live music. But it's just as easily understood as a testament to the spirit of the band itself, captured so expertly in "Road Diary": Decades later, everything has changed, but still they remain, on that stage, performing what Springsteen has called his magic trick. No retreat, no surrender.

BOTTOM LINE It's a must-see for fans. But you knew that.