‘Nuremberg’ Review: James Vanderbilt’s Historical Thriller Looks at When Perpetrators of Systematic Genocide Used to be Brought to Justice [A-] TIFF
It’s typical and expected from every year that a handsomely crafted historical drama would come along and remind audiences of a certain part of WWII history. Such is the case with Nuremberg, a film that on paper, sounds extremely typical and familiar. Given the subject matter, and the timing of the film’s release, it seems like it’s inevitable that we were to get yet another film that talks about the Holocaust and the war crimes committed by the Nazis.
And so it shocks me to report that Nuremberg is a gripping, tightly scripted piece of work, and it’s all thanks to writer/director James Vanderbilt’s storytelling voice and stellar performances from an ensemble cast.
The film establishes its historical context right from the beginning. The year is 1945. Adolf Hitler has committed suicide, and the Second World War is coming to an end. As the Allies make their way into Germany, they are suddenly greeted by an open surrender from the last remaining members of the Nazi high command. The leader among them is Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), the man who was second in command, right behind Hitler himself. And with the Führer now dead, Göring now represents the face of the Nazi state.
Many members of command among the Allies want the Nazi captives shot and killed immediately, but U.S. Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) thinks differently. He comes up with a radical idea – form an international tribunal that puts these Nazis in a public trial, and to get Göring to admit responsibility for their war crimes and atrocities. As Jackson mentions in one conversation, war always starts from laws signed by men, and so even if the fighting is now over, the war must end in a courtroom.
One of the members called in to assist the process is US Lt. Colonel Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), an army psychiatrist. His task: to evaluate the Nazi captives. For Kelley, he sees this as an opportunity to understand Göring, to psychologically define evil so that no such atrocity can ever be repeated again.
Based on Jack El-Hai’s 2013 non-fiction book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg propels with a constant sense of urgency and momentum. Vanderbilt spends a great deal of the film exploring the practical and moral logistics of establishing such a trial in the first place, as characters walk and talk in rooms and debate strategies on how they can pull this off. Any mistake, any faltering, would dramatically backfire and give Göring a platform to grow and gather sympathizers. Kelley even says it at one point: that’s why Göring surrendered in the first place, because he wants the trial and to be put on public television and radio. It seems like even when the Allies won the war, the pressure is still on them to tread carefully. The trial must be a perfect victory, or the optics will make it look like a devastating defeat.
It brings to mind similar stakes and logistical dilemmas journalists faced in Spotlight, where a group of characters must navigate their morals while doing what must be done. In the case of the Nuremberg Trials, it isn’t about morality, because you can’t win with a moral argument. It’s about making sure that the truth is undeniable.
Vanderbilt ensures this sense of urgency and historical significance is always looming over our characters when they’re making decisions or arguing amongst themselves. The stress is palpable, so much so that Vanderbilt smartly implements moments of levity. A laugh here, a funny one-liner there, the film offers breathers for the characters (and the audience) to continue and tread onward. This gives Nuremberg a remarkable sense of pace. With a runtime of 2.5 hours, it never has a dull moment.
Another significant portion of the film involves Kelley intentionally getting close to Göring, to slowly earn his trust so he could understand his consciousness. While Jack El-Hai frames Göring’s backstory and philosophical outlooks almost like a biography, Vanderbilt presents the material as sequences of dialogue between Malek and Crowe, and they are some of the most gripping moments in Nuremberg. Though Vanderbilt is well aware of the big picture stakes going on, he still takes his time with all the intimate moments of character, when it’s just the relationship between two people. In these moments, Crowe channels a twisted charisma reminiscent of performances like Robert de Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon. He would say a line that is irresistibly charming, and we would catch ourselves laughing or smiling at something he said, only to remember that we shouldn’t be connecting to this man at all. It’s one of Russell Crowe’s best performances in recent memory.
And therein lies the point that Malek’s Kelley comes to understand over the course of the film, that there is no difference between the Allies and the Nazis. Kelley, in his actual writing, concluded that the Nazis were “disturbingly normal” and “not mentally disturbed.” Of course, he was alone in that opinion at the time.
Vanderbilt understands this. His choice to incorporate sweet and genuine interactions between Kelley and Göring’s wife and daughter proves this. As Kelley goes from establishing a friendship with Göring to being pulled in multiple directions by the Allies high command to realizing what Göring and his men did in the camps, he undergoes something that can only be described as part deterioration and part revelation. It’s arguably Rami Malek’s best performance to date.
Anchoring the historical lens of the film is Michael Shannon and Richard E. Grant, who plays David Maxwell Fyfe, one of the prosecutors from the British side. Both give exceptionally grounded performances, reminding themselves and their colleagues why they must do this. Other much-needed additions in the cast include John Slattery as Colonel Burton Andrus, who delivers the script’s quippier lines in that blunt no-time-for-bs way that Slattery does best, and Leo Woodall as Sergeant Howie Triest, who starts the film serving as Kelley’s German translator, but slowly unveils how the stakes for the trial are deeply personal to him. By the time the titular Nuremberg Trials start, the tension is palpable, even when we already know the outcome and are aware of the countless adaptations that followed over the years. Vanderbilt combines his film with real historical footage from the 40s, giving that sense of immediacy, like we are watching this event unfold in the present tense. For a historical drama centering around one of the darkest chapters in human history, Nuremberg does not shy away from showing what needs to be shown.
Perhaps the most affecting part of Nuremberg is that even after it all comes to an end (we all know how the trials end), Vanderbilt isn’t interested in celebrating. From the early character interactions in the script to the clear marketing for the film, Nuremberg touches on the idea that “this atrocity cannot happen ever again,” as we scoff at that with our own awareness of what has happened since 1945 and what’s happening in the world today. It’s a strangely reassuring feeling then to see that Vanderbilt and his film is clearly aware of this truth, that the takeaway is man’s capacity for evil can be found anywhere, that we are all capable of doing it. And for that reason, Nuremberg isn’t just your average “good enough” historical drama. It’s actually a riveting, powerful warning, spoken with great urgency and desperation for us to heed the call.
Grade: A-
This review is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival where Nuremberg had its world premiere. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film theatrically in the U.S. on November 7.
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