NUREMBERG
(director/writer: James Vanderbilt; screenwriter: based on the non-fiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai; cinematographer: Dariusz Woiski; editor: Tom Eagles; music: Brian Tyler; cast: Leo Woodall (Sgt. Howie Triest), Russell Crowe (Hermann Goring), Rami Malek (Douglas Kelley), John Slattery (Col. Burton C. Andrus), Mark O’Brien (Colonel John Amen), Richard E. Grant (Sir David Maxwell-Eyfe, lawyer), Michael Shannon (Robert H. Jackson), Colin Hanks (Dr. Gustave Gilbert); Runtime: 148; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producers: George Freeeman, Istvan Major, Cherilyn Hawrysh; Sony Picture Classics; 2025-USA/Hungary-in English, German)
“Intelligent historical psychological period recreation
thriller.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The American filmmaker James Vanderbilt (“Truth”/”Zodiac”) assertively directs and writes this intelligent historical psychological period recreation thriller about the 1945 International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice that implicated the Nazi high command for World War II crimes. It’s based on the non-fiction book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai.
The trial is a study in evil.
At the end of World War II the highest ranking survivor of the Nazi regime, Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe), creator of the Gestapo, is arrested by the Americans and charged with committing war crimes.
Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), the lead prosecutor, gets the cooperation from the allies (France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) to gather evidence to convict him. Jackson asserts: “This war ends in a courtroom, as he falls, so do they all.”
Goring and 21 other Nazi officers stand trial. The Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) questions them and makes sure they are fit to be tried. Goring is backed into a corner defending the evil lost cause he helped build and still believes in.
Great performances by Crowe, Malek and Shannon keep the film chilling.
The high-concept film, an important one as its judgment themes still morally register for today’s world, covers the same subject matter as Stanley Kramer’s Oscar-winning 1961 epic Judgment at Nuremberg but from different perspectives.
It played at the Zurich Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 11/14/2025 GRADE: B+
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