2025 AFI FEST Reviews: ‘Nuremberg,’ ‘Dead Man’s Wire,’ ‘Christy’
As we enter the last phase of the Fall film festival season, this past week saw the AFI FEST take place over the course of five days within Los Angeles, California. Known for being one of the final places films can showcase before they head to theaters, special guild screenings awards season, dozens of films from around the world premiered to sold-out crowds on Hollywood Boulevard, whether at the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the smaller screens attached to the TCL Chinese, and the restored Egyptian Theater, where multiple repertory screenings were showcased by Oscar winning director Guillermo del Toro. In this dispatch from the festival, we take a look at three titles that debuted at previous film festivals (Venice, TIFF) earlier in the season, but make their American debut via AFI, as well as try to make their last attempt to build buzz as they are about to be released into a chaotic, top heavy award season, and are all titles that are based on true life events.
Nuremberg (Dir. James Vanderbilt)
Have you ever come across pure evil and looking right into its eyes? This is what Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) was tasked with as he was recruited by the United States military for his expertise as a psychiatrist, where he was tasked to interview members of the Nazi military to see if they were fit to stand trial for their crimes within World War II. The top of the list of interviewees was Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), a German Nazi politician, aviator, military leader who was one of the most powerful figures within the Nazi Party, and one of Hitler’s most trusted allies. As the interviews are going one, the two men get to know each other, but Kelley slowly comes to realize that the more he talked to Göring, the more everything he is telling him is a lie so he can misdirect him so when Kelly sends in his intel to U.S. Chief of Counsel Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon), the information would backfire in the courtroom and Göring would walk out free of having to consequences for his part in the horrific crimes against humanity the Nazi’s committed. As the trial gets close with each passing day, tension builds as Kelley, Jackson, and all involved know they have only one chance to take down these evil, otherwise they will walk free and the world will know that they failed to secure justice for all of those lost shamelessly lost their lives in the most horrific war in world history.
Much like Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, the pace of Nuremberg is swift and thoroughly engaging, making the 148-minute runtime feel like it’s flying by as we get closer and closer to the confrontation between Jackson and Göring at the pivotal moment of the trial. The film relies on a quick, smart script by writer, director James Vanderbilt to give its ensemble cast as many scenes to chew dialogue cascading with historical facts, emotional monologues, and quippy zingers in the courtroom and in the prep for the trial that makes for one of the most surprising, successful screenplays of the year in terms of balancing tone within such a serious subject matter. Shannon, alongside veteran actors John Slattery and Richard E. Grant, provides strong work here, while Leo Woodall (giving the best work of his career) steals the show from everyone one screen with one scene where he talks to Kelley about his family, why he joined the war, and why men like Göring need to pay for what they did. The only thing that holds this movie back from being great is the two lead performances from Malek and Crowe, who are both wooden in their work here, and given that the film is relying on the audience needing to connect to these two people’s journey as a look into the mind of a madman, they are mismatched and acting in two separate, uninteresting films. It’s a shame because the characters are there for them on the page, and yet, these two Oscar winning actors couldn’t deliver the same quality of work as everyone else involved and drag the movie down because of it.
Grade: B
Dead Man’s Wire (Dir. Gus Van Sant)
In the winter of 1977, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) had reached his limit with a local mortgage company in Indianapolis, Indiana, as the owners of the establishment, M.L. Hall (Al Pacino, in his most Foghorn Leghorn performance to date), and his son Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). The father and son company gave Tony a loan where the payments kept going up and up, never allowing for an adjustment to the payments, or to give Tony proper time to pay them back on time without penalties. Frustrated, angry, hurt, Tony walks into their offices, looking to attach a shotgun with a wire attached to it that would render the victim deceased if they move in the wrong direction, causing the gun to go off. The disgruntled young man is looking for M.L. himself, but when the old man is on a vacation in Florida, Richard becomes his hostage, as the we slowly see this Dog Day Afternoon-esque feature play out as the police, media, and Tony and Richard’s families watch on as Tony locks the two of them in his apartment, wanting money, release of his debt, and a personal apology from M.L. Hall.
For most of the runtime, Dead Man’s Wire is a two-hander between Skarsgård and Montgomery, and they are successful in showing how desperate one person can go at the hands of someone else who took advantage of them. Even if Richard didn’t go to the extremes his father hints at of being unforgiving and unwilling to care for those they give these loans to, he is still a face of the company that Tony sees as an enemy, even though it is clear the triggerman is mostly just wanting an apology and some fame as the attention of his case becomes more and more public on the local news and radio station where he conducts an interview with popular DJ, Fred Temple (Colman Domingo in an excellent supporting turn). And as Richard pleads to his father to just make the apology within a phone call they share at the midpoint of the film, Van Sant does a great job of allowing us to empathize with Richard as much as Tony, leading to tense, satisfying conclusion that results in one of the better films from the writer-director in some time. It’s a solid, perfectly effective attempt at tackling a smaller scale film that we’ve seen before that’s led by a confident director working with a cast willing to go all in and give committed performances to bring this story to life.
Grade: B-
Christy (Dir. David Michôd)
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, there was no bigger name in professional women’s boxing than Christy Martin (Sydney Sweeney). Growing up in a small town in West Virginia, Martin took the world by storm under the assistance of her abusive manager turned husband James V. Martin (Ben Foster), as well as the assistance of promoter Don King endorsing her, giving her the nickname “the Coal Miner’s Daughter,” in reference to her father’s occupation back home. While she could hold her own in the ring, talking trash as she knocked out any and all opponents that stepped into the ring, outside of the ring, Martin was scared of the man she was with, judged and taken advantage of by her family, and having to hide her attraction to women, breaking off relationships with women in order to advance in her career and make those around her happy rather than finding her own path in life where she could be the number one boxer in the world and love who she wanted to love. This journey is the focus of director David Michôd’s latest feature, which doesn’t try to do anything more than tell Christy Martin’s story, minus all of the flash, bells, and whistles found within some other boring sports bio-pics released this year (looking at you The Smashing Meh-chine).
At the core of Christy lies the best big-screen performance of Sweeney’s young career, where she is fully able to transform into the celebrated boxer. Sweeney, known for being more of an online sensation for gossip and controversial commercials these days, reminds us all that when given the right material, she’s one of the most promising actress of her career, and Christy allows her to take on that thick West Virginia accent, perform all of her own stunts in the ring, and slowly gets us to buy into her emotional struggle as Martin in stuck in a world where she has no control of any aspect of her life. In one of the most devastating scenes in the film, she pleads to her mother about getting her away from the clutches of her husband, only for her mother, Joyce Salters (Merritt Wever, in one of the strangest, laughable performances of the year), to call her crazy, forcing the boxer to stay, which soon leads to a violent confrontation between Christy and James. Opposite Sweeney’s stellar work is Foster’s terrifying portrayal of this nasty, vile man that abuses her without a care in the world, and is eager to do it again and again in a sadistic, manipulative move to keep his power over her. These two lead actor’s work elevate Christy into something worth watching, given everything else that surrounds them (the inconsistent supporting cast, bland cinematography, the dozens and dozens of unpleasant looking wigs) isn’t even close to being on the same level of quality as what they brought to their roles.
Grade: C+
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