A chess match, played by two brilliant but flawed opponents. Two narcissists hoping to manipulate the other into helping them achieve their own ends. For Hermann Göring, the goal is to cheat the hangman’s noose and show the world that the Nazi Reich was a just cause. For Dr. Douglas Kelly, the goal was to unmask evil, to show what made Nazi monsters unique, absolving humanity of their fear that there’s a monster lurking in all of us—and, for Kelly, a chance to make a name for himself.
James Vanderbilt’s 2025 film Nuremberg explores this chess match, almost as a distraction from the globally important war crimes trials meant to hold Nazi leadership responsible. It’s easy, he seems to say, to get caught up in one’s own ambitions and miss the greater picture. Kelly and the audience find a sort of jovial respect for Göring. The good doctor believes Göring will mop the floor with the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson. Because it’s all a game. Why not shoot the Nazis and be done with it?
Then, in the third act, Vanderbilt plays the film footage shown at the actual Nuremberg trials. I won’t post those pictures here, but Vanderbilt, wisely, includes nearly 10 minutes of them. It’s all a game? Why not execute the Nazis and be done with it?
Because they engineered an historic slaughter. Because, as the film footage shows, they built camps that could dispose of 6,000 Jewish German citizens a day.
It is a shocking but necessary choice. It explains why the world must see what these monsters were responsible for. Even Dr. Kelly must see before he decides to help the prosecution.
It is a phenomenally hard film to watch. It had to be hard to make. But it is worth it as a viewer and as a citizen.
Russell Crowe is probably better in this role than in any of his career. Remi Malik is charming and dripping with egomania. Micahel Shannon is pitch-perfect.
In light of our current administration’s efforts to create detention centers from unused warehouses, this film is as necessary now as Judgement at Nuremberg was in the 1960. Watch it. Ask your parents and children to watch it.
Five stars.
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