Nuremberg (2025)

James Vanderbilt’s psychological thriller drops us into post-war Germany with what appears to be a straightforward assignment: US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley needs to evaluate Nazi prisoners for trial fitness. Straightforward on paper, anyway. What actually unfolds is a deeply uncomfortable battle of wits between Kelley (Rami Malek) and Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s former second-in-command. Based on Jack El-Hai’s book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,” the film examines something rather more troubling than courtroom procedure: how the act of understanding evil can become its own trap.

Malek presents Kelley as a man who trusts his training, perhaps excessively so. His sessions with Göring begin with professional detachment but slide toward something harder to categorise as the Reichsmarschall demonstrates his considerable talent for manipulation. We track this relationship from the preliminary psychiatric evaluations through to the actual trial proceedings, where prosecutor Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) attempts to establish unprecedented legal territory: holding state actors accountable for crimes against humanity. Small task, really.

Crowe owns every scene he inhabits. Not through scenery-chewing theatrics but through an almost casual command that proves far more unsettling. His Göring radiates charisma that masks monstrous capacity. He discusses his wife Emmy and daughter Edda with apparent tenderness, then reveals flashes of the violence that characterised his career. The performance works because Crowe never descends into caricature. This Göring grasps psychology better than the psychiatrist supposedly evaluating him. Watching him methodically reel Kelley in becomes genuinely disturbing.

The film succeeds most when exploring how evil presents itself as entirely reasonable. Göring doesn’t rant. He converses, jokes, even assists Kelley with examining Rudolf Hess in exchange for correspondence privileges. He becomes, horrifyingly, almost personable. Which is precisely Vanderbilt’s point about fascism’s operating procedures. You don’t need cartoon villains when seemingly ordinary people will do.

Pacing becomes the film’s liability. At two hours twenty-eight minutes, certain sequences drag without justification. Supporting characters receive sketches rather than portraits. Leo Woodall’s Sergeant Howie Triest deserves more development. John Slattery plays commandant Burton Andrus as the sort of unsentimental, cynical figure John Slattery often plays (though he does it well). Richard E. Grant’s British counsel David Maxwell Fyfe surfaces too briefly. The script occasionally force-feeds historical context to audiences presumed to know nothing about the period, which stalls momentum unnecessarily.

The cinematography captures Nuremberg’s devastation without becoming exploitative. Muted colours, careful framing. The visual approach reinforces themes about moral architecture collapsing alongside physical structures, though I’d suggest some choices lean toward aesthetic bleakness for its own sake rather than serving narrative purpose.

Shannon brings appropriate gravity to Jackson, particularly when the prosecutor grapples with creating legal precedent from nothing. How does one prosecute crimes that required inventing new terminology first? His opening statement reproduces Justice Jackson’s actual words from 21 November 1945, and that moment carries genuine weight.

The film raises questions about professional ethics that runtime constraints prevent full exploration. Kelley’s role blurs uncomfortable boundaries between psychiatric evaluation and intelligence work. When Jackson requests reports on prisoners’ legal strategies, what becomes of confidentiality? The movie acknowledges this tension without resolving it, which feels somewhat unsatisfying.

Nuremberg functions best as meditation on proximity to evil and its costs. Understanding monsters doesn’t protect you from becoming their instrument. The closing titles reveal Kelley’s trajectory: alcoholism, obsessive warnings about future fascism that nobody heeded, eventual suicide by cyanide in 1958. A sobering reminder that studying evil clinically extracts payment nonetheless.

For viewers drawn to psychological drama anchored in historical events, Nuremberg delivers strong performances and raises questions that resist comfortable answers. You won’t leave triumphant. Given the subject matter, that’s probably the only honest response available.