Directed and Written by James Vanderbilt, based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai Starring Russell Crowe as Hermann Göring
Introduction
This is not the first film to take as its subject matter the trial of leading Nazi Party members after the end of the Second World War, and no doubt it won’t be the last. 1961’s excellent Judgment at Nuremberg is perhaps the best, although that dealt with the trial of second-string Nazis in 1947, rather than the remnants of the High Command in what we’ve come to know as “The Nuremberg Trials,” as with this latest movie.
The closest we’ve had to 2025’s Nuremberg is the two-part made-for-TV miniseries of the same name starring Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox, released in 2000. On first viewing, I’d say that the new film, despite being made for cinema with the bigger budget that implies, doesn’t quite live up to the earlier effort. That’s based on a quick revisiting of the similar ground covered twenty-five years ago, courtesy of a free showing via YouTube.
First viewings can be deceptive, but, speaking personally, I tend to enjoy films more on first viewing, especially when seen on the big screen. So I suspect my first impression—that this movie didn’t quite live up to my expectations, nor to the largely positive reviews it’s received so far—will stand.
In both movies, it’s the character of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring that dominates. As Göring was the highest-ranking Nazi to survive to face trial (if we ignore the fact that Hitler stripped him of all official positions and honours in his Last Political Testament), that is only to be expected. The new movie concentrates heavily on the relationship between Göring and the American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, and is based on Jack El-Hai’s book on the same subject, with perhaps some influence from Kelley’s own account in his own book, 22 Cells at Nuremberg.
Positives
The movie was directed with admirable pace by Vanderbilt, such that I never felt the almost two-and-a-half-hour length dragged at any point.
As far as the acting was concerned, it’s a decent ensemble piece, with mostly good performances all round. In particular:
- Andreas Pietschmann as Rudolf Hess: was Hess’ periodic amnesia a tactical affectation, or a genuine ailment? By the end of the film, we are still none the wiser, but that was also true of the Allies, with assessments varying according to which of the many psychiatrists examined him at any given time. At the time of Hess’ “suicide,” aged ninety-four in 1987, according to the excellent book The Loneliest Man in the World by the former director of Spandau prison Eugene Bird, that was still the case more than forty years later. Full credit to Pietschmann for capturing Hess’ enigmatic nature in what was a relatively minor but important role.
- Géza Bodor as Albert Speer: Unlike Hess, who never disavowed his Nazi past, Speer dedicated a whole book (Inside the Third Reich) to expressing his remorse. How genuine this remorse was is as unclear as Hess’ amnesia, and Bodor does a good job of capturing this ambiguity.
- Michael Shannon portrays American Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson with competence.
- Richard E. Grant is worthy of note as Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, head of the British contingent.
- Leo Woodall is very good as Sergeant Howie Triest, Kelley’s German interpreter.
But really, it is Russell Crowe whose star shines brightest as the arrogant, pompous, corrupt, though often superficially charming Göring. I assume that Crowe learnt German specifically for this part, in which case, as far as I’m able to tell as a non-German speaker, he did an excellent job. That he spoke English in the dock—which was clearly not the case in real life, although Göring could apparently speak English to a decent level—can be excused as a cinematic contrivance designed to make the film easier to follow.
Negatives
The weakest performance, and one that is important given how much of the film rests upon it, came from Rami Malek as Kelley—a performance that was too broad and lacking in subtlety for my taste.
Some parts of the movie, such as Kelley sneaking off to pass letters back and forth between Göring and his wife and daughter, seemed almost certainly an invention, though presumably they are also present in the original source material.
Having praised the pace of the direction, I do think we took far too long to get to the courtroom scenes, and what we did get was nowhere near enough. What was needed at this point was a “Gotcha!” moment where the prosecution turned the tables on Göring, using insights gleaned from Kelley’s many hours of discussion with the former Reichsmarschall. The script tried to provide this, but all we got—via the intervention of Maxwell-Fyfe—was a list of the positions Göring held in the Party and State between 1942 and 1944, based on Kelley’s assertion that Göring would never, even if his own neck literally depended on it, speak against the memory of his late Führer.
I don’t know how accurate this was to the court transcripts, but it seemed nowhere near enough in itself to prove Göring’s guilt, whether in regard to the fate of Europe’s Jews or to the planning of aggressive war in Europe. It was not enough to cause Göring to crumble in the dock, which, despite comments to the contrary, we didn’t really see anyway—merely a lessening of his up-to-that-point self-assured arrogance.
In addition, the courtroom scenes were overloaded with melodrama, with pained glances between the prosecution team when Göring made a good point, and euphoric looks when Jackson did likewise, as though they were partisans at a sporting occasion rather than participants in a historic and groundbreaking legal procedure.
How Göring procured, or managed to conceal for a year and a half—despite presumably numerous and thorough personal searches—the cyanide capsule that enabled him to cheat the hangman’s noose was not addressed, other than the suggestion that it was somehow linked to a sleight-of-hand magic trick learnt from Kelley, which seems unlikely. As we, almost seventy years later, still don’t know the answer to this question (though help from a sympathetic guard seems the favourite), it would have been better not to raise the issue at all.
The film should rightly have ended with Göring’s death, but instead we were treated to the sight of Julius Streicher, played rather cartoonishly by Dieter Riesle. Streicher sobs with fear in his cell before being coaxed to his fate by Triest. I found the scene extremely gratuitous, serving no purpose other than to show that these war criminals, whose decisions and actions led to the deaths of tens of millions, met their own deaths as snivelling cowards. This may or may not have been true in Streicher’s case, but it certainly wasn’t true of all those convicted.
I don’t know the details of how each of them met their end, but I do know that, to give one instance, ex-Foreign Minister Ribbentrop defiantly shouted “Deutschland über Alles” before the hood was placed on his head.
At any rate, I thought it a bad way to end the film, somewhat redeemed by an epilogue about what became of some of the central protagonists which, in the case of Kelley—and I won’t spoil it for those who, like me before this movie, don’t know his postwar fate—came as a genuine surprise.
Conclusion
I enjoyed the movie more than much of the above perhaps suggests. But I do think it inferior to the TV version from twenty-five years ago. There was far too much pure invention, or what at least smacked of pure invention, for my taste. Probably, no feature film could adequately recapture the real-life drama and real-world importance of the trials. In that case, the subject matter would be best served by a lengthy, multi-part, serious documentary.
Still, worth a watch.
Anthony C Green, November 2025
Poster credit: By Sony Pictures – IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81605084
