Movie Review: Russell Crowe and Rami Malek face off in the Nazi trial drama ‘Nuremberg’

Associated Press ^ | Nov 6, 2025 | Lindsey Bahr

[CondoleezzaProtege]

The Nuremberg trials have inspired filmmakers before…

But for the latest take, “Nuremberg,” writer-director James Vanderbilt focuses on a lesser-known figure: The U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who after the war was assigned to supervise and evaluate captured Nazi leaders to ensure they were fit for trial (and also keep them alive). But his is a name that had been largely forgotten: He wasn’t even a character in the miniseries.

Kelley, portrayed in the film by Rami Malek, was an ambitious sort who saw in this assignment an opportunity to write a book (bestselling, he hoped) on his findings about the men who committed such atrocities. Over several months he conducted many hours interviews and Rorschach tests with the inmates, including fallen Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering (Russell Crowe), who proved an especially fascinating subject as the highest ranking official still living.

The film, in theaters Friday, centers on a series of conversations between Kelley and Goering, who develop something almost like a friendship — or at least a temporary understanding. It’s interesting…but it can’t quite synthesize its classical form with the bleak, sobering truths at its core.

Crowe, who speaks both German and English in the film, is well suited to playing this charismatic, larger-than-life egoist who believes he can outwit those around him.

Malek, wild-eyed as ever, portrays Kelley as an overconfident opportunist who is more than willing to cross lines to gain Goering’s trust. Are we rooting for him, though? Not exactly.

What does it say about a nearly two-and-a-half hour drama when the 80-year-old footage from inside Nazi concentration camps that was shown inside the real courtroom is the most compelling and memorable sequence? Perhaps in these days of Holocaust denial, it’s never a bad idea to remind people of the truth…

---

TOPICS: TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: film; hitler; hollywood; holocaust; movie; movies; nazi; nazigermany; nuremberg; ramimalek; russellcrowe; worldwar2

[catnipman]

“He wasn’t like Hitler at all!”

ROTFLOL!

[dfwgator]

[Paal Gulli]

The whole of the Nuremberg trials — every testimony, every word uttered — were recorded direct-to-disk on more than 2000 long-playing vinyl records. These “albums” were stored in secret for decades for fear that revisionists would steal and destroy them but there finally was a documentary concerning them released to the public in 2022.

And that documentary has been uploaded to YouTube.

Nazis at Nuremberg The Lost Testimony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va8WD3beDwo