Quick Synopsis: As the Nuremberg trials are set to begin, a U.S. Army psychiatrist gets locked in a dramatic psychological showdown with Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring.

Movies can be useful teaching methods; numerous lives have been saved because kids have seen someone perform the Heimlich manoeuvre in movies. The lessons and themes that films feel the need to teach can often be indicative of the times they’re set in; the 60s were full of films warning of the danger of nuclear war. So it’s a bit weird to see a film in 2025 warning the audience of unchecked hatred leading to horrors. “How did this happen?” “because people let it happen”. Even more concerning is that this is somehow a controversial lesson.

It’s a lesson that’s taught very well in this film. We see how people who are evil are still people. This isn’t shown in a way to humanise or justify them. If anything, it makes their actions more horrifying. What’s more likely to scare you, the knowledge that some people are born evil and can’t be changed, so just stay away from them, or the feeling that one day your neighbours and friends will be the ones to pull the trigger on you? Nuremberg is incredibly effective in that aspect. It must have been a tricky movie to write because it’s a legal drama where everybody watching knows the people were found guilty.

Somehow, this film is still interesting. Part of that is down to how much detail it goes into. It explains the importance of legal procedure. The law is often seen as a hindrance in movies and television. Seriously, watch how many police TV shows operate on the basis of “if the cops arrest someone, they’re guilty. Lawyers just stop the police from doing their job”. Nuremberg shows how if the law isn’t implemented properly, you’re fucked. It explains easily how difficult the job was. Looking back, it may seem like they had a slam dunk case, but there was no precedent for foreign states punishing people for crimes against their own people. Before this, the only people who could bring a legal case were the leader of the country itself, which, for politically based crimes, you can see would be an issue, especially one where a lot of people in the country either agree with what happened, were directly involved, or deny its existence. As an examination of the time, this is tremendously fascinating.

Now onto the downside, and it’s a pretty big one. Rami Malek is not at his best here. His attempts at anger during some of the key scenes are almost laughable. It’s quite hard to take him seriously as he comes off like he’s auditioning for a comedy. This could be the role of a lifetime for some actors, but his performance is so low effort that it feels like a contractual obligation rather than something he’s actually excited about. I also wasn’t impressed with the climax of the trial, where Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (who later helped drive Alan Turing to his grave, so fuck him) successfully goads Goring into admitting he still has admiration for Hitler. It’s the key moment in the trial, and is the reason for the trial ending the way it does. For whatever reason, it doesn’t land. A moment like that should feel huge; there should be a sense of “oh, he fucked up there”. Instead, it just feels like another sentence. You’re not left with “oh, that’s it!”, instead it’s “oh, that’s it?”.

In summary, a pretty good movie. But I’d rather watch a documentary about it than see it again.