Nuremberg (Photo – Scott Garfield)
“I am the book,” Russell Crowe tells Rami Malek near the end of Nuremberg. “You are merely the footnote.”
House of Nuremberg
Directed by James Vanderbilt – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
In this case, of Crowe, playing Hermann Göring, Hitler’s right-hand man, in James Vanderbilt’s new film, it could also be said that he is the star—and the rest of the cast, while certainly more than footnotes, still stand in his shadow.
Every star, of course, needs a co-star to play off of artistically, and that’s where Rami Malek, playing psychologist Douglas Kelley (a real-life character), comes in. Hired to evaluate the mentally unstable half-dozen captured Nazis, he takes a particular interest in Göring. Crowe’s exchanges with Malek echo the intensity of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster dueling in The Silence of the Lambs.
As portrayed by Crowe, Göring is part aristocrat, doting father, and part Hannibal Lecter—a sly intelligence that seeps out through half-smiles and a faintly mesmeric grip on the younger man.
Malek is also excellent, embodying an ambitious go-getter whose resolve turns increasingly ambiguous as he falls under Crowe’s spell. Initially, I thought Michael Shannon was miscast as the lead prosecutor, but a critical scene convinced me otherwise. Shannon, who has a knack for playing men in over their heads, proved to be right for the role. Richard E. Grant is solid as the British attorney who bails out Shannon’s character when he proves no match for Crowe’s wily tactics. John Slattery, of Mad Men fame, does well as the principal jailer of Crowe and his fellow Nazis.
The film acts as a companion piece—though separated by some sixty years in release—to Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg, with Maximilian Schell as the defense attorney (for which he won an Academy Award) and Spencer Tracy as the judge. However, Nuremberg is a courtroom drama only toward the film’s final act.
Nuremberg is more about psychology than judgment, though it offers no easy answers in either regard. “What makes the Germans different from us?” Malek asks early on. No answer is given, and when he presses Crowe about Hitler’s rise to power, the reply is laconic: “He made us feel like Germans again.”
While the film has the usual Hollywood touches, which occasionally veer into clichés, one thing it avoids is a happy ending. The real-life story of Douglas Kelley is alluded to in a postscript before the final credits.
> Playing at Regal Paseo, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, AMC Santa Anita 16, AMC The Americana at Brand 18, and LOOK Dine-In Cinemas Monrovia.
Leave a Reply