Nuremberg, from director James Vanderbilt, is a psychological thriller and historical drama based on the 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai. It follws Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) who seeks to carry out an assignment to investigate the personalities and monitor the mental status of nazi war criminal Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) and other high-ranking Nazis in preparation for and during the Nuremberg trials. The film also stars Leo Woodal, Michael Shannon, Richard E. Grant and John Slattery.
Vanderbilt approaches the Nuremberg trials less as a solemn historical reckoning and more as a slickly staged character drama. The result is certainly watchable. The verbal sparring, theatrical monologues, and corridors filled with cigarette smoke give the film a propulsive energy. Yet this stylistic sheen sometimes keeps the deeper horrors of the period at arm’s length. Instead of allowing the audience to sit with the enormity of the crimes under scrutiny, the film often pivots to clever dialogue or charismatic performances that seem designed to make the material go down more smoothly than it should.
Malek’s portrayal of Douglas M. Kelley anchors much of the narrative. His interpretation of the psychiatrist as a man fascinated by control, performance, and the psychological thrill of his work sets the tone for the film. His early scenes, full of charm and confidence, establish Kelley as a figure almost too enamoured with his own cleverness to confront the darker implications of his assignment. Opposite him, Russell Crowe’s Hermann Göring dominates every room he enters. Crowe captures the character’s manipulative intelligence and theatrical bravado, and his scenes with Malek are among the film’s most compelling. Their exchanges reveal a troubling symbiosis in which both men seem more driven by personal ambition than moral clarity.
The film’s central problem is that it frequently echoes this dynamic. It becomes so absorbed in the drama of personalities that it struggles to create space for the emotional and ethical weight of the trial itself. When the real footage from the concentration camps is shown, the shift in tone is jarring. Instead of grounding the movie, the footage underscores how distant the surrounding scenes often feel from the reality they depict.
Nuremberg succeeds as a tense character study and an accessible courtroom drama, but it falls short of fully confronting the enormity of its subject. Its craftsmanship and performances make it engaging, yet its preference for spectacle leaves the film feeling strangely hollow at key moments.
