With its November 7, 2025, theatrical release, Nuremberg brings one of history’s most consequential trials back into the cinematic spotlight. But this time, the lens doesn’t fixate on the familiar faces of Allied prosecutors or even the notorious Nazi defendants. Instead, as reported by the Associated Press and several film critics, writer-director James Vanderbilt’s drama zeroes in on a lesser-known yet pivotal figure: Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, the U.S. Army psychiatrist charged with evaluating the mental fitness of Nazi leaders—including the infamous Hermann Göring—for the dock at Nuremberg.
Starring Rami Malek as Kelley and Russell Crowe as Göring, the film draws from Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, a work that unearthed Kelley’s overlooked story and offered a chilling psychological portrait of evil. As the AP explains, Kelley’s mission was to determine whether Göring and more than 20 other Nazi officials captured at the end of World War II were fit to stand trial. Kelley’s assignment placed him in close quarters with men responsible for some of the 20th century’s worst atrocities, forcing him to grapple with questions that would haunt him—and, by extension, the audience—long after the war’s end.
The film opens on the last day of WWII in Germany, with American soldiers literally urinating on a swastika—a jarring bit of dark humor that sets the tone for a movie unafraid to mix the solemn with the sardonic. As The Film Stage notes, this approach marks a departure from the heavy, almost reverential tone of earlier Nuremberg adaptations, evoking instead the wit of Joseph H. Mankiewicz or Billy Wilder. But while the humor and brisk pacing (the film clocks in at just under two and a half hours) keep things moving, they also risk undermining the gravity of the subject matter.
At the heart of Nuremberg is the uneasy relationship between Kelley and Göring. Over months of interviews and Rorschach tests, Kelley tries to unlock the mind of Hitler’s right-hand man. Crowe, who moves fluidly between German and English, delivers a performance that is both charismatic and chilling, embodying Göring’s larger-than-life ego and his unrepentant sense of self-importance. “He wanted to be treated as a head of state, which he considered himself to be,” El-Hai told the AP. Göring’s self-delusion is on full display, as he assures his fellow defendants, “Don’t worry, before much time goes by, there will be statues of us all over Germany.”
Malek’s Kelley is no less complex. Ambitious and somewhat opportunistic—he hopes to parlay his wartime experiences into a bestselling book—Kelley is also deeply unsettled by what he discovers. As El-Hai recounts, Kelley’s central question was whether the Nazi defendants shared any psychiatric disorders or unique pathologies. The answer, to his horror, was no. “They certainly had neuroses, but many people who function normally have neuroses,” El-Hai explained to the AP. “That made him afraid and made him believe that people like that are in our population in far greater numbers than any of us.”
This insight, which Kelley later published in his book 22 Cells in Nuremberg, forms the film’s most unsettling thesis: the architects of genocide were, in many ways, disturbingly ordinary. As Kelley himself warned, “I am convinced that there is little in America today which could prevent the establishment of a Nazi-like state.” It’s a message that resonates with contemporary anxieties, and one the film leans into as it moves from the prison cells to the courtroom.
Yet, for all its provocative ideas, Nuremberg has drawn mixed reviews for its execution. According to The Film Stage, the film “better resembles the films of Joseph H. Mankiewicz or Billy Wilder than, say, the Stanley Kramer picture on this same subject.” The script, penned by Vanderbilt, is filled with quips and rapid-fire dialogue, consciously resisting the weightiness that might be expected from such material. This lightness, however, becomes a liability once the story reaches the courtroom. Critics like Lindsey Bahr of the AP argue that the trial scenes devolve into “a standard courtroom drama, resorting to cliches and a rousing but hollow ‘we got him’ moment that feels antithetical to the film’s larger point.”
The supporting cast boasts a roster of familiar faces, including Michael Shannon as Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg. Other notable roles include Richard E. Grant as British lawyer Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, John Slattery as the prison commandant, and Leo Woodall as a German-speaking U.S. officer. The ensemble helps flesh out the world of the trial, but as several critics have noted, the film’s real focus remains the psychological chess match between Kelley and Göring.
In a particularly poignant twist, Kelley’s own fate mirrors that of his notorious subject. Twelve years after Göring cheated the hangman by swallowing a hidden cyanide capsule, Kelley died by suicide in front of his family, also using cyanide. The parallels between the two men—both egomaniacs, both certain of their own rightness, both ultimately undone by inner demons—lend the story a tragic symmetry. As El-Hai reflected in his interview with the AP, “When I was writing the book, I often discussed with Dr. Kelley’s son, Doug, what it must have been like for them to be in this jail cell together, and we always jokingly characterized them as King Kong versus Godzilla.”
The film is not without its flaws. Some reviewers, like The Film Stage, question the dramatic point of a story where the protagonist is merely “catching up to the righteous bureaucrats who play supporting roles.” Others, like Lindsey Bahr, lament the lack of spark in the conversations between Kelley and Göring, suggesting that the film “can’t quite synthesize its classical form with the bleak, sobering truths at its core.” Yet, even critics acknowledge that the inclusion of archival footage from Nazi concentration camps remains the film’s most powerful moment—a grim reminder of the horrors that prompted the Nuremberg trials in the first place.
As the world continues to wrestle with the legacy of fascism and the banality of evil, Nuremberg offers a timely, if imperfect, meditation on the dangers that lurk within ordinary men. The film’s message—that the seeds of atrocity can take root anywhere, even in seemingly civilized societies—lands with particular force in an age of rising extremism. For all its cinematic shortcomings, Nuremberg compels viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about power, complicity, and the fragility of democracy.
In the end, Nuremberg may not resolve the moral questions it raises, but it ensures that the conversation endures—reminding us that history’s darkest chapters are never as distant as we might wish.
