NUREMBERG

THREE STARS Convinced of his innocence, General Herman Göring surrenders to the Allies, setting the stage for one of history's most significant trials.

DRAMA US English #NUREMBERG Starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek

James Vanderbilt’s NUREMBERG arrives with the grand confidence of a prestige drama: big cast, bigger subject, and the kind of glossy, old-school production that once fuelled Hollywood’s award seasons. It’s a film that wants to reckon with history while reminding us why we keep returning to it. It may be about then, but it’s also about now, geddit? That the film only partly succeeds shouldn’t overshadow the fact that it’s still compelling, often gripping cinema.

Ironically, one of the film’s biggest assets (in all senses of the phrase) is also one of its weakest. We open in 1945, days after Hitler’s death, as Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) surrenders to the Allies. You can’t take your eyes off his portly, swaggering and disturbingly charming presence, a monstrous intellect wrapped in seductive bravado, yet Crowe is only ever a whisker away from panto villain. With a performance pitched somewhere between Hannibal Lecter and Elon Musk, we’re expected to be unsettled by Crowe/Göring’s plus-sized confidence, and mostly we are, mostly for the right reasons.

He’s a suitably overwhelming counterpoint to Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), a U.S. Army shrink tasked with evaluating the Nazi leader’s fitness to stand trial. Malek’s twitchy energy does seem out of step with the stately wartime cadence around him yet it pays off in the later stages when the man’s ambitions, compromises and creeping (creepy?) fascination with Göring tilt the moral compass.

This thread is paired with the evolving trial led by Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) for the US and David Maxwell-Fyfe (Richard E. Grant) for the Brits. The Soviets are curiously absent, one of several odd choices about the film that are never adequately addressed. Since Nuremberg is a case without precedence, they’re free to make up the rules as they go along. And though we know the outcome, there’s still an anxiety about whether their court will actually hold water.

Where NUREMBERG works best is in what it suggests rather than what it concludes. Kelley’s ethically murky position as doctor, interrogator, confidant and reluctant accomplice gives Vanderbilt room to lean into the troubling seductions of power. He builds out the thorny question of how democracies respond to fascism without becoming compromised themselves. A late-film sequence involving the treatment of Göring’s family quietly underscores that point.

While familiar from a thousand similar films, NUREMBERG is at its strongest in the courtroom. Shannon and Grant both provide steely gravitas and a hint of humour right down to the Gotcha! moment. Real documentary footage of the camps, though jarring in such a polished production, remain devastating.

Although it takes a while to shed its jitters, NUREMBERG does settle into something fairly sturdy and thoughtful. It may not have either the searing moral clarity or true originality of Great War Films, but it rewards as a welcome reminder that the forces which shaped the 20th century still shape us today. Imperfect, certainly, but worthwhile.

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