NUREMBERG (2025)

I conceived of the recent CONCLAVE as a kind of classical filmmaking that doesn’t really happen much any more. And now here’s NUREMBERG.

Hermann Goring and the rest of the surviving Nazi leadership are on trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. You know the story. Army psychiatrist Doug Kelley is charged with keeping them alive until the trial, and forms a particular bond with Goring.

The performances are interesting. Russell Crowe as Goring is twinkling and avuncular. Rami Malek as Kelley is quick and a little twitchy. At the top of the film, Kelley is shown Goring’s stash of “heart pills”, pops and crunches one, proclaims them to be codeine and smiles “I’m a fan.” Goring and Kelley are both showy egomaniacs, is the thing – but Goring has achieved something in his life and Kelley, in his mid thirties and already starting to show grey hair (Malek is actually 44), hasn’t. Michael Shannon, as Justice Jackson, the man who pressed for trials rather than summary execution and achieved this by blackmailing Pope Pius, finds a sort of man-out-of-time Lincolnesque gravitas while also being hobbled by ego and wants. Richard E Grant does a stately turn, and Steven Pacey from BLAKES 7 in my childhood shows up as George Marshall.

There’s a nice set of double bookends to the film, and a message-y coda that feels a little bit nailed on but is nonetheless handily done. It’s generally a solid, well-written piece of work, almost a chamber piece – I suspect there are barely more than a dozen speaking roles. Crowe and Malek have to carry the majority of the film, and they’re very watchable: two vain, insidious charmers: but only one is comfortable in his own skin.

Seen via the WGA FYC app.