YNOT at the Movies

The real war in writer-director James Vanderbilt's "Nuremberg" isn’t fought in court, but in the human mind. Handsomely mounted and performed with conviction, this historical drama promises to explore the origins of evil and the birth of modern justice but ends up telling a story too divided to make either theme resonate. It's a film that looks and sounds monumental, yet it feels curiously distant, more invested in procedure than in people.

Adapted from Jack El-Hai's book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, the film unfolds in the immediate aftermath of World War II, as U.S. Army psychiatrist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is assigned to assess the mental state of Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler's second-in-command, along with other captured Nazi leaders. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) leads the Allied prosecution team in creating the first international tribunal in history. What follows is both a psychological duel between doctor and war criminal and an attempt to define justice after unimaginable horror, a setup that should have been searing but is instead scattered and restrained.

The story is undeniably captivating, but Vanderbilt's film never decides where its center lies. It wavers between the psychiatrist's fascination with his infamous patient and the legal and ethical drama of the trials, leaving both underdeveloped. Malek's Kelley remains curiously adrift, at times an ambitious scientist, at others a haunted observer, but his purpose never crystallizes. Beyond Göring, the rest of the Nazi hierarchy fades into anonymity, reduced to background figures in a film that purports to examine the psychology of evil.

Crowe, though, commands the screen. His Göring is chillingly persuasive, witty, vain, and magnetic, embodying the terrifying banality of charm in service of mass murder. Yet even his commanding performance cannot fill the film's deeper void: we learn almost nothing about what shaped his fanatic loyalty to Hitler or how he justified the killing of millions. The portrait fascinates but never enlightens.

Only once does the film pierce through its intellectual shell: when Sgt. Howie Triest (Leo Woodall), a German-Jewish émigré who fled the Nazis as a child, confides in Kelley about returning in an American uniform to face his family's persecutors. It is a quiet, devastating moment, rich with empathy and pain, the one scene where the film truly breathes. The rest of the movie is startlingly emotionless, clinical where it should burn.

The inclusion of journalist Lila McQuaide (Lydia Peckham) feels completely unnecessary. Her character serves no narrative function and adds only shallow commentary that distracts from the core drama. The climactic courtroom scenes also play strangely, with the alcoholic British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe (Richard E. Grant) emerging as the unlikely hero while Jackson, the supposed architect of justice, fades into ineffectuality. It is an almost absurd reversal, justice rescued by inebriation rather than conviction.

There is no denying Vanderbilt's craftsmanship. The film is directed and written by James Vanderbilt, shot by cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, designed by Eve Stewart, and scored by composer Brian Tyler. Each brings technical finesse and period authenticity, yet the emotional core remains elusive.

This is a film of great ambition but little conviction, a story of moral reckoning that, for all its intellect, forgets to make us feel.

"Nuremberg" opens in theaters on Friday, November 7, 2025.