'Nuremberg' is full of big questions and missed opportunities

"Based on Jack El-Hai's 2013 book about the fateful encounter between the Berkeley psychiatrist Douglas Kelley and Hitler's second-in-command and the highest-ranking Nazi to be put on trial by the Allies, Hermann Goering, the story revolves around Kelley's assignment to ensure that the defendants at Nuremberg were fit to stand trial, and charts his complex personal relationship with Goering up until he takes the stand."

"This would not be such a noteworthy observation were it not that the pacing and tone of the production were so uneven. The first half of the film feels very slow and plodding. To compensate, one cannot help but feel that in an attempt to engage the viewer, Vanderbilt's production trips over itself. The story is often burdened with tin-eared asides, misjudged contrivances, and jarring use of voiceover."

"There are running gags, some of which pay off, and others which just don't. There are ideas that do work: the trope of the magician's sleight of hand has a glorious and inventive pay-off. But the tongue-in-cheek reprise of Crowe in Gladiator leading his war criminals down the tunnel into the courtroom is of questionable taste to say the least. Such inglorious bastardizations don't sit well with the actual footage of the camps shown subsequently."

James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg depicts the encounter between psychiatrist Douglas Kelley and Hermann Goering, focusing on Kelley's task to assess defendants' fitness to stand trial and his evolving relationship with Goering. The narrative spans the lead-up to and the courtroom proceedings at the first international trials in 1945, with the trial appearing about halfway through. The film's pacing and tone are uneven, with a slow, plodding first half and attempts to inject engagement through misplaced asides, contrivances, and jarring voiceover. Some sequences succeed, notably a magician's sleight-of-hand motif, while cheeky reworkings of Crowe's Gladiator feel in poor taste alongside camp footage. Casting is stellar, with Michael Shannon and Richard E. Grant delivering riveting performances.

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