Nuremberg

NUREMBERG 🪖 

Over the past few years we’ve had a number of World War II films that have provided unique perspectives on an era in history that continues to be ripe for further exploration.

In 2023, The Zone of Interest contrasted the daily life of a Nazi commander and his family while they lived peacefully next to the atrocities of an internment camp, and then 2024 had The Brutalist, where a Holocaust survivor tried to reclaim his glory through the American ‘Dream.’
Now we have NUREMBERG, a courtroom drama that places Hitler’s second in command, Hermann Göring (played by Russell Crowe), on the stand for the war crimes of the Nazi regime.

Out of the three films, NUREMBERG is the most palatable. We get a scenario where a commanding officer gets psychologically evaluated and ends up looking better after it than he would’ve if they had just let him die—which I think most audiences would root for.

The case made against a quick death is what makes the film so compelling. There’s this idea that by killing the remnants of the Nazi regime, you would be making martyrs out of men who barely deserve to breathe.

NUREMBERG weaves in the complex nature of an uprising that began because of a law made during the First World War with the debate amongst the World Powers that the end should be handled the same way it started—through the legal system. Obviously there’s a bit of hypocrisy at play when Robert H. Jackson laments that the last thing he wants is for statues to be made of these men, when eighty years later we are still highlighting them in stories on film for the masses to see.

I get it—we must be reminded of the horrors of the past to not repeat them in the present or the future, but his words echoed throughout the last half of the film in a way that contradicted the supposed villain of the story, who they instead showcased as a man with a charming intellect rather than a devious nature—which I thought worked against the film.

What did work for the film is both Russell Crowe, who loses himself in the role of Hermann Göring, and Leo Woodall, who continues to be one of the rising stars in this next generation of actors.

NUREMBERG may struggle to deliver on its central message—that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind—but it is still a gripping exploration of the final days of World War II, elevated by the commanding performances of its noteworthy cast. 

Enjoy!

7.1/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 2hrs28mins

Where:  Now Playing In Theatres

Nuremberg Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer - November 27th, 2025.

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