Nuremberg (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Nuremberg

NUREMBERG (2025)

Starring Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, Mark O'Brien, Colin Hanks, Wrenn Schmidt, Lydia Peckham, Richard E. Grant, Michael Shannon, Lotte Verbeek, Andreas Pietschmann, Steven Pacey, Paul Antony-Barber, Jeremy Wheeler, Wolfgang Cerny, Dan Cade, Donald Sage Mackay, Dieter Riesle, Wayne Brett, Mesterházy Gyula and Sam Newman.

Screenplay by James Vanderbilt.

Directed by James Vanderbilt.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 148 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Screened at the 2025 Philadelphia Film Festival.

Nuremberg is one of those films that is tough on a movie reviewer. It is based upon one of the most important legal cases in world history. The stakes and world-wide importance were huge. The acting is mostly very good, the storytelling is crisp, and the film is mostly very entertaining for what it is.

At the same time, Nuremberg is so blatantly, unapologetically historically inaccurate that it is hard to really recommend the film. I mean, I get it, all historical and biographical films tend to change some of the facts for dramatic license, but Nuremberg tells some real whoppers. What really happened was certainly dramatic enough to make a terrific film, the truth did not have to be massaged so much in order to dramatize what transpired in the world courts after World War II.

Now, I have to admit, while I am a big history fan, I haven’t gone over the specifics of the Nuremberg trials in quite some time. But even while watching the film, several times I saw something happening and thought that it did not seem right. After the screening I spoke with some other viewers who were more versed in the history, and they started reeling off all the instances that history was massaged or outright changed. So, I went back and read up on the period and they were right.

There are lots of parts here that make no sense – like the American soldier who is (for some reason) hiding the fact that he was a German Jew who just moved to the US about five or six years earlier. Beyond the simple question of why he would hide that fact, you also have to wonder how a man who lived in German for the first 16 years of his life and has only been American for a brief time, has no hint of a German accent.

How did a German officer get a cyanide capsule to commit suicide while in custody well into the trial process?

And the supposed “gotcha” moment where Hermann Göring is tripped up by a lawyer and shows his guilt is completely manufactured, and honestly it is not in any way an admission of culpability whatsoever.

Also, Rami Malek’s character’s final speech has nothing to do with the story, per se. It is more of a forewarning about the future – read: now – disguised as a tantrum. And even though I completely agree with most of the sentiment, even I have to acknowledge that it is used in a horribly heavy-handed way.

Which is all kind of a shame, because just as a viewing experience, Nuremberg is rather entertaining. The acting is mostly good, Russell Crowe as Göring, in a very difficult role that has much of his dialogue in German. He captures the dichotomies of the man – the charm, the evil, the anger, the self-serving vanity.  

Rami Malek is a bit more problematic as the psychologist charged with getting into Göring’s head. He seems to be playing the character a bit too broadly. Also intriguing is Michael Shannon as the Supreme Court justice who is most responsible for launching the military tribunal and Colin Hanks, who sounds more like his dad than her ever has before.

The action shown is huge and tragic, so Nuremberg is entertaining enough as a drama, just don’t expect to get the real story.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2025 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 7, 2025.