https://www.frontpagemag.com/nuremberg-2025/ Nuremberg is a 2025 historical drama written, directed, and co-produced by James Vanderbilt. Nuremberg is a misnomer; the film is not an exhaustive treatment of the thirteen trials of Nazi war criminals that took place in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. A more accurate title for the film would be Five Men at Nuremberg, those five men being SCOTUS Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon), psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), Hermann Goering (Russell Crowe), Sergeant Howard Triest (Leo Woodall), and Colonel Burton C. Andrus (John Slattery). Jackson played a key role in initiating the Nuremberg trials. Goering was a top Nazi defendant. Kelley was a thirty-two-year-old Army psychiatrist and lieutenant colonel tasked with assessing the Nazi defendants’ mental fitness to stand trial. Triest was a US Army interpreter, and Andrus was the commandant of the Nuremberg prison. Richard E. Grant stars as British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, and Colin Hanks plays a US Army psychologist, Dr. Gustave Gilbert. Nuremberg is roughly two and a half hours long. Nuremberg opened in the US on November 7, 2025. Please go see this movie. Buy a ticket; see it in a theater. It’s a good movie, and it’s for grown-ups. If we want movies like this, we have to support them with our ticket purchases. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a prestige Hollywood production that managed to do all of the following. Nuremberg has a coherent plot. In spite of its runtime, the film’s pace is fast. I’ve seen it twice, and I was never bored. It features recognizable and coherent human characters facing significant obstacles and, in some cases, overcoming those obstacles; in other cases, characters are crushed by those obstacles. Each character’s fate makes sense in relation to the storyline they are living out and their own internal makeup. This equation – a recognizable human character v. a challenge we all might face and rising or falling in the face of that challenge – has been the fulcrum of drama at least since the ancient Greeks. The actors taking on these roles are charismatic, award-winning professionals who know how to command the screen, arrest your attention and sympathy, and immerse you in the story. In interviews they convey a sense of respect and commitment to the grave subject matter. Russell Crowe as Goering is getting all the attention, but I was in awe of Leo Woodall’s low-key performance as Triest. Towards the end of the movie, after I’d been thoroughly entertained by all that had preceded this moment, in a quiet, subtle series of scenes, Woodall / Triest surprised me by wringing spontaneous tears from my eyes. I don’t want to spoil this moment for you, but it’s one of the most beautiful and profound moments I’ve ever seen in any film, and if you take a quick bathroom break, or dip too deeply into your popcorn, you will miss it, so pay attention. I like watching Rami Malek in anything and his intense, driven, intelligent performance is exactly right for Kelley. I fell in love with John Slattery’s unsmiling depiction of Colonel Andrus, the commandant of the Nuremberg prison. When Andrus throws Hess against a wall and informs him that he is never to give another sieg heil during his remaining time on earth, I wanted to award Slattery an honorary Oscar. Grant brings old school glamour; he takes Goering down with a velvet glove. Secondary cast members, especially those playing Streicher and Ley, are very good. The film revisits an historical era and the heaviest of topics, but the script is witty and crisp. It moves like a well-oiled machine. It asks why people commit atrocities and how we can understand and respond to those who commit atrocities. Amidst the unavoidable horror, there are earned moments of laugh-out-loud humor, for example, Nazi Julius Streicher’s response to a Rorschach test. Nuremberg looks good. You’ve got a bombed out post-war German city, throngs of extras in period clothing, (mostly Hungarian; the movie was filmed in Hungary), and what appear to my civilian eyes as authentic military uniforms. The Palace of Justice courtroom, site of the Nuremberg trials, “was replicated to the inch using the actual building plans” according to Vanderbilt.
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2025/11/21/nuremberg-2025-a-good-movie-for-grownups-about-important-historical-events-by-danusha-v-goska/