Nuremberg (2025) Sony Pictures Classics/Drama-Thriller RT: 148 minutes Rated PG-13 (violent content involving the Holocaust, strong disturbing images, suicide, some language, brief drug content) Director: James Vanderbilt Screenplay: James Vanderbilt Music: Brian Tyler Cinematography: Dariusz Wolski Release date: November 7, 2025 (US) Cast: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O’Brien, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt, Lydia Peckham, Richard E. Grant, Michael Shannon, Lotte Verbeek, Fleur Bremmer, Andreas Pietschmann, Steven Pacey, Paul Antony-Barber, Dieter Riesle, Peter Jordan, Tom Keune.
Rating: ***
It’s been said of a lot of things that timing is everything. It definitely applies to cinema. You don’t have to be a film scholar to notice the parallels between the historical drama Nuremberg and what’s going on in the world now. Here in America, we have a large number of people who have fallen under the sway of a leader with ill intentions. Isn’t that what happened in Germany in the 30s? Look how that turned out. It’s precisely the right time to release a film like Nuremberg. If nothing else, it’s a warning that forgetting the past dooms us to repeat it.
I suppose a brief history lesson is in order here. When WWII ended and Nazi Germany fell, it was decided to put the surviving Nazi leaders on trial for their war crimes. It was a first. Something like this had never been attempted before. The International Military Tribunal, spearheaded by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (played here by Michael Shannon), came into being. It was a joint deal between the US, the UK, France and the Soviet Union. The Nuremberg trials (named for the German city where they took place) commenced in November 1945 with 22 defendants, among them Hitler’s second-in-command Hermann Goring.
Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind) plays Goring, an intelligent and shifty sort who takes no blames for any of the atrocities that occurred in the concentration camps. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody) is brought in to examine Goring and the other prisoners. He’s not what you’d call an altruistic man. He sees the assignment as an opportunity to write a book that will hopefully make him famous.
Kelley is onto Goring from the get-go. He knows the prisoner can speak English despite his claims to the contrary. He also knows his heart pills are really opiates. Kelley classifies him as intelligent but narcissistic. The two men start a dialogue in which Goring denies responsibility for the extermination camps. He also displays how far gone he is in terms of his ideology. He passionately believes everything Hitler said and remains loyal to him. He even believes he will somehow escape justice.
There comes a point when Jackson approaches Kelley and asks him to violate doctor-patient confidentiality. He wants the not-so-good doctor to hand over his notes and tell him everything Goring says during their sessions. He plans to use it against him in court. It’s an ethical quandary. Where do his true loyalties lie, his profession or his country?
Writer-director James Vanderbilt (Truth) is ambitious. He tries to cover a lot in just under two and a half hours. Most of Nuremberg deals with the relationship between Kelley and Goring. Some of it is about Jackson and his legal team preparing for the monumental trial. To me, that’s the more interesting aspect of the film. That’s already a heavy load, but Vanderbilt adds to it with subplots involving translator Sgt. Howie Triest (Woodall, The White Lotus) who has a personal stake in the trial and a female reporter (Peckham, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) trying to get the inside scoop from Kelley. Her plot thread is not fully developed and feels almost extraneous.
I wouldn’t call Nuremberg too crowded, but there are a lot of characters to keep track of like British counsel David Maxwell Fife (Grant, Withnail & I) and American colonel Burton Andrus (Slattery from the MCU). That’s not all. Kelley becomes close to Goring’s family, wife Emmy (Verbeek, Outlander) and young daughter Edda (Bremmer). Oh, let’s not forget fellow Nazi criminal Rudolf Hess (Pietschmann, Dark). That’s the guy who spent the rest of his life as the sole inmate at Spandau Prison. You might remember this from Wild Geese II (1985).
The acting in Nuremberg is very good. It’s not surprising seeing that the two leads are Oscar recipients. Crowe’s been camping it up a bit as of late with roles in The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) and Kraven the Hunter (2024). He even took a page from Laurence Olivier’s book by playing Zeus in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). In Nuremberg, he shows he can still be serious. He’s chilling as Goring. Malek is also very good as Dr. Kelley, a guy facing true evil for the first time. It not only makes him question some of his choices, it also gets him to consider taking decisive action in the never-ending fight against tyranny. His conversation with Triest at a train station is one of the movie’s highlights.
Okay, some of Nuremberg is half-baked, but it doesn’t kill the movie. It’s an extremely compelling film. I just wish it showed more of the trial. I would have loved to have heard more testimony. I did like all the legal prep stuff. That’s a subject of interest to me.
In short, I like Nuremberg. It’s a good albeit flawed movie. Some of it could stand more development. Aside from that, it makes for good informative entertainment.
