There is no lack of movies about war, especially movies about WWII. Nuremberg is a different movie, in the best possible ways, and it is much more enjoyable than I was expecting.
As you may expect, Nuremberg is about the Nuremberg trials but less about that than the buildup to it. The flick starts with the capture of the awful Hermann Göring, one of Hitler’s top dogs. Then the film kicks off with a series of different stories. One is that Robert H. Jackson, played by Michael Shannon, wants to kick off the Nuremberg trials instead of hanging them to set international legal precedent on the crimes committed by the Nazis. It’s a tough battle, as many want them hanged and to move on, and there’s the risk of them getting out of their sentence through some kind of legal loophole.
As the same time this is going on, the psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, is brought in to assess the mental states of the captured Nazi’s to ensure they are fit for trial and to potentially get some useful and incriminating evidence. He builds a strong relationship with Göring with times where he seems sincere and almost not like a monster.
The start of the movie, as the bulk of the plot points are being built up, can be a little bit slow. This changes pretty quickly as it builds closer to the trial. A lot of what makes the movie work is the surprisingly excellent performance by Russell Crowe as Göring. He does an exceptional job of making Göring likeable at times and allowing the traces of awfulness to build up as the movie goes on. Rami Malek is kind of average at times, with moments where he is good and moments that are less so. One of the best moments in the movies is a short scene by Leo Woodall, who is a friend of Kelley’s who gives an explanation of his family’s history with WWII. It was a surprisingly powerful short scene.
Nuremberg is less about the trail itself and more about the build up to the trial. It’s a movie that has exceptional moments, and average ones, but on the whole is well worth watching. It’s one I will look forward to revisiting soon, and so it’s well deserving of its place on the Blu-Ray shelf.
