Analyzing Evil
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [or near purple] is a link to something in the above title or the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
No plot spoilers this time because the essential content of this film about the Nuremberg Trials of the mid-to-late 1940s and the fact the film’s events are based on what’s presented in Jack El-Hai’s book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (2013) so there’s nothing to be “revealed” in this posting not already based on available fact, although I assume much of the dialogue and interactions among all the major characters are the result of the normal use of dramatic license in the screenplay.
Here’s the trailer:
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WHAT HAPPENS: Shortly after the end of WW II in Europe, the second-ranking leader of the Nazi empire (after Adolph Hitler’s suicide), Reichsmarschall Herman Göring (Russell Crowe), along with his wife, Emily (Lotte Verbeek), and young daughter Edda (Fleur Bremmer), is captured by Allied forces on May 7, 1945. When this news reaches Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) he pushes the U.S. government to hold Göring and other captured Nazi High Command as defendants in an international tribunal so the world could be made fully aware of the atrocities committed by this sadistic regime, even though a new justification needed to be established for such a trial with agreement by victors U.S., U.K., France, and the Soviet Union. Army psychiatrist Major Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is assigned to interview the prisoners to seek understanding of their motives and recommend if any of them were potential suicides during their incarcerations as the trials will proceed in Nuremberg, Germany; Göring is far from that concern, though, as he justifies his actions as benefiting the German people, further claiming he’s never been defeated so he sees no negative outcome at the trial—he also claims he knew nothing of the extermination of Jews/others in the various concentration camps. Although Kelley isn’t conned by Göring’s haughty declarations he does provide some help for this prisoner by bringing a letter from him to his family, then returning the favor with a letter back to Göring (the family’s later arrested also, in connection with art thefts, but I don't recall anything further about that situation as presented here).
As the trial begins Göring again denies knowledge of the “Final Solution,” goads Kelley by comparing the Holocaust to the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan; frustrated , drunken Kelley reveals private info from Göring to Lila (Lydia Peckham), a Boston Globe journalist which she prints, resulting in Kelley being removed from the case. Yet, he stays for the trial, gives his notes to Jackson (who decided to be a prosecutor) and British barrister Sir David Maxwell Frye (Richard E. Grant), but the best Jackson can do in court—even after showing film footage of the horrors of the camps—is getting Göring to admit he thought the “Final Solution” would be deportation rather than extermination so Jackson was unable to get the confession he sought; Frye did, though, when he got Göring to declare he’d still follow Hitler, even knowing about the Holocaust. Göring’s found guilty (sentenced on September 30 1946) but kills himself with a hidden cyanide pill before his scheduled hanging. Kelley goes home to the U.S., writes a book about the Nazi menace, Twenty-two Cells (1947), but it’s a flop and he’s chastised for trying to warn American policymakers that the kind of horror the world experienced from the Nazis isn’t confined to a group of horrid Germans but instead potentially resides in every society, statements rejected by “It can’t happen here” American honchos, leading Kelley to commit suicide himself in 1958, but at least the trials led to acceptance of rationale for international war crimes. (There are a couple of other notable characters to be found in this narrative, interpreter Howard Triest [Leo Woodall] and Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess [Andreas Pietschmann], but you’ll have to read about them at this site, so feel free to take a look if you like.)
SO WHAT? The only other film about the Nuremberg trials that I’m aware of (or can remember seeing across my eroding decades) is Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) starring—among others—Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximillian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Cliff, and William Shatner, about a different set of trials than what’s shown in Nuremberg (but still of the overall determination to bring guilty Germans to justice for the tragedies they created/justified) with this long-ago film about trying judges and prosecutors who enabled the Nazi regime. I vaguely remember it as being equally powerful to what we find in Nuremberg, but my recall’s hazy enough to not attempt any direct comparisons (next time I have 3 free hours I'll watch Judgment ... again). Regarding Nuremberg, though, I found it to be an impressive exploration of the difficulty of getting a successful, egomaniacal butcher to confess his sins (Damn! Why does that sound so familiar? Could it have something to do with Latin American oil? Not sure.), although the confidence exuded by Göring has led some critics to complain (bitterly at times, as you’ll see in this review’s next section) to claim he’s being presented in a somewhat sympathetic light, justifying his situation, accepting no guilt in regard to the charges against him; for me, though, as we see in his actions on the stand during his trial it’s all part of his self-centered self-understanding, which also allows him to lie with impunity with no regard for anyone else as long as his statements benefit him. (Hmm, that sounds familiar also; who could I possibly be thinking about?)
I’ve also seen reviews that castigate Malek’s character or acting (or both) as being funny, as in ridiculous, prompting another disagreement from me* as I see Kelley as being passionate to get to the truth while also willing to acknowledge even these horrid Nazis as at least believing in their cause although it apparently made them blind to the catastrophes they were bringing to Europe with intentions to export their horrors as worldwide as possible. Sadly, this absurd justification on the part of Göring and the other prisoners reminds me of the most sobering statement I’ve ever heard in a film: “Everyone has his reasons” says Octave, a character in Jean Renoir’s French masterpiece, The Rules of the Game (1939)—itself a critique of the foolishness of/distain by the powerful, banned by the wartime French government for “having an undesirable influence over the young” (this came not all that long before the Nazis stormed into Paris)—which doesn’t justify any of the evils perpetrated by anyone but it does explain how such actions come to be. Nuremberg is, in a way, a film of failures: the failure of the Nazi Third Reich to achieve its goals, the failure of public justice given to the Nazi High Command as many of the worst avoided public deaths by taking their own lives, and—most importantly for me—the ironic failure of Kelley’s warnings that such misery could manifest itself in U.S. politics/society, we must be on guard against it happening (but "Those who forgot history ...").
*Although I'll note if the Golden Globes can classify One Battle After Another as comedy (at least they didn't call it a musical) then I guess you can find humor in anything if you rationalize it that way.
BOTTOM LINE FINAL COMMENTS: Nuremberg opened in 1,802 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters on November 7, 2025 (still in 49 of them), has so far grossed $14.5 million ($34.5 million worldwide), is available to stream on Apple TV ($19.99 rental), yet there’s marginal CCAL encouragement with 72% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, a 61% average score from Metacritic, results which mystify me some as I found it considerably more worthy than that. A few, nevertheless, are in enlightened agreement with my (extremely-rare) 4½ stars, such as Michael Rechtshaffen (MC score 90%) of The Hollywood Reporter who says: “Eighty years later, those historical events have been lent a chilling relevance [… a] compelling depiction of what historian Hannah Arendt would later call “the banality of evil” resonates in the face of more recent developments around the world. […] those disturbing images are certain to bring the Holocaust into sharper focus for those who appear to have forgotten the lessons about the atrocities that the world had once vowed never again to repeat.” However, you can see how reviews such as this one from Gregory Nussen (MC 30%) of Screen Rant would bring the overage averages down: “With Nuremberg, James Vanderbilt is less interested in showing Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) as "normal," as he is in accentuating Hitler's right-hand man as a charming charlatan. But this intentionality is miscalculated, and the film, bloated as it is with jarring tonal changes and thickly laid-on sentimentality, tilts so far into humanizing Nazis that it seems, at times, to apologize for the behavior of the high command. […] Whatever the case, the film's more enthralling moments are persistently handicapped by its shifty sympathies. It's clear Vanderbilt sees Nazism as a pervasive disease, but the treatment of that disease as a charming curio only periodically works to cement his intentions to make all this feel prescient.” Clearly, Nussen and I see this film in very different ways.
If these conflicting responses leave you unclear about Nuremberg my choice of a song for my usual tactic of the review-ending Musical Metaphor may be just as confusing because instead of a somber tone to match the film’s serious content I’ve gone with something loud and active, The Who’s "Won't Get Fooled Again" (1971 album Who’s Next) due to its energy which reflects the intensity brought by Jackson and Kelley to the Trials plus its ultimate message which resonates with the intended warning of the film: “We’ll be fighting the streets / With our children at our feet […] And the men who spurred us on / Sit in judgment of all wrong / They decide and the shotgun sings the song.” In my (possibly soon-to-be-deported) opinion “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss” feels eerily like Trump 2017-2021, then 2025-?, with his ICE/FBI/Justice Department/Cabinet pseudo-Gestapo actively on the march as many of us know Congress and the Supreme Court are seemingly our only hope for salvation from this maniac and his minions (“the hypnotized [who] never lie” because they don’t know the truth to begin with). We survived those dark 1940s days, can we do it again in 2026?
SHORT TAKES
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