Ticketworthy! - Nuremberg

There are some movies that have to be respected for the audacity of their ambition, even if not their execution. Sometimes a filmmaker pitches an idea, and you just have to smile and wonder “how in the world are they going to pull that off?” That’s what I thought going into Nuremberg. Director James Vanderbilt deserves some respect at least for even attempting a film where a good chunk of the runtime is spent presenting Hermann Göring as a relatable human being. That’s an ambitious endeavor.

Make no mistake, the film doesn’t sugarcoat the atrocities committed by Göring (Russell Crowe) as it tells the story of the 1946 Nuremberg trial. It fully commits to making him and the other members of the Nazi high command answerable for their crimes, much as the actual trial did. Yet, it doesn’t focus entirely on the courtroom or paint any of the defendants as inhuman monsters. In fact, it tells the story of young psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) who is brought in before the trial to analyze the psyches of the Nazis. What he finds is the men are all terrifyingly human.

It’s an interesting approach to take to the subject, and one that Malek and Crowe in particular take full advantage of. Both men are at the top of their games and deliver powerhouse performances that I cannot praise enough. The dynamic between them is one of the most compelling I’ve seen on film in a long time.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t seem to fully realize what it has in the duo. Entirely too much time is spent with them separated, doing other things. This should be a battle of wits, a back and forth between two men in an ideological battle with one another who develop a begrudging respect along the way. That’s the crux of the story. Every scene that doesn’t serve that story is just a distraction. There are a lot of distractions in Nuremberg.

Not that the side-plots are bad, per se. The rest of the cast is really good as well, and there are plenty of interesting stories to tell around such a historically important event. It’s just that the central conflict between Göring and Kelley is so compelling that everything else feels like a waste of time. For as good as the acting and directing is outside of the prison cell, all I really wanted was two hours of those two men in a room mentally sparring with one another.

Still, I can’t say that Nuremberg is bad or disappointing. A lot of the film does focus on its two leads and their relationship. It just perhaps loses that focus more than it should. It’ll still entertain most audiences, and there’s plenty to like. If nothing else, it’s a respectable attempt at this particular tale. There’s just so much more potential here, and Nuremberg can’t seem to get out of its own way long enough to reach it. As a movie, it may not be guilty of any major sins, but it doesn’t have enough conviction either.