Film review: ‘Nuremberg’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
The Nuremberg war crimes trials are in many ways seen as the culmination of the Allied Powers’ grand moral victory over the Nazi regime. The trials, which took place in the German city of Nuremberg from 1945 to 1946, laid bare the Nazis’ crimes of aggressive warfare, genocide and the horrors of the Holocaust.
The occasionally riveting but sometimes clumsy and cliched Nuremberg, which is based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai, dramatises the Allied prosecution team’s quest to convict the highest ranking captured Nazis, particularly the second most powerful person in the Nazi hierarchy, Herman Goring (Russell Crowe). At the centre of the story, however, is American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) who was brought in to assess the mental fitness of the Nazi defendants. Kelley finds himself in a critical but precarious situation caught between Allied leaders who want his investigation to aid the prosecution and the coldly manipulative Goring.
Given the gravity of the circumstances at Nuremberg, it’s hard not to feel that this film places far too much emphasis on Kelley and not enough on the trials themselves. After a lengthy build up, the only court sequence shown in any detail is the confrontation between Goring and American Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon). It’s powerful cinema and leaves us wondering how much better this film could have been if we’d seen more sequences like this. Nearly 200 people were tried at Nuremberg and there were prosecutors from Britain, France and the USSR as well as the US. Apart from Jackson, though, we only see British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E Grant) briefly in action.
While the film is US -centric and doesn’t cover quite as much of this history-making event as we might like, it still makes fascinating points about the nature of justice and morality with Kelley and others forced to question their role and responsibility in a world in which human values had seemingly been obliterated. It is important to note that this film features horrifying footage from the Nazi death camps. The film also points out that there was no precedent for Nuremberg as there had never been an international war crimes trial. The Allied command were nervous that it might fail, that its judgements might be deemed invalid and that it might even backfire by giving the Nazis a platform to spout propaganda.
The historical weight of the trial and the potency of its findings are unfortunately diluted here by some cliched filmmaking including soundbite dialogue, over the top music and some weird comical scenes including a flashback to senior Nazi Rudolf Hess crashing his plane in England and being set upon by farmers.
The film often feels like old school Oscar bait with the emphasis on some big performances. Malek is charismatic as Kelley giving him an intriguing mix of cockiness and self-doubt, although if it’s hard to get past the feeling that the film focuses too much on him. Crowe is terrific as Goring masterfully playing him as a smug, manipulative narcissist. Michael Shannon is typically intense and imposing as Jackson who seems a more likely candidate for this film’s central character.
There’s much to admire in Nuremberg but the opportunity for a great film has been missed.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ Historical.
Classification: M.
Director(s): James Vanderbilt.
Release date: 4th Dec 2025.
Running time: 148 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.
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