Historical dramas don’t come more on the nose than Russell Crowe’s Nuremberg, which was hailed as an Oscar-worthy performance.
Based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai, Nuremberg is inspired by the true story of the trials held by the Allies.
The 2025 film focuses on the Nuremberg Trials, held between 1939 and 1945, which were a pioneering moment in history that led to the implementation of international criminal laws.
Precedent was set as Nazi leaders were individually held responsible for committing war crimes, including the Holocaust.
The film is particularly poignant after the recent US attack on Venezuela, where forces captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.
US President Donald Trump described his overnight blitz on the country to capture its leader as the ‘greatest military operation since World War II’.
In the film, Crowe, 61, stars as Hermann Göring, who was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party.
At its premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival, the film received a four-minute standing ovation – a rarity for that event.
The Hollywood Reporter said the film ‘couldn’t have arrived at a more consequential time’.
Critics predicted it could even nab Crowe an Oscar for his performance, alongside Rami Malek, who stars as psychiatrist Douglas Kelley.
The American psychiatrist is tasked with working out if the Nazi leaders are fit to stand trial, eventually finding himself in a ‘complex battle of wits’ with Göring, who was Hitler’s right-hand man.
Other cast members include Michael Shannon as lawyer and politician Robert H. Jackson, Richard E. Grant as prosecutor David Maxwell Fyfe and Leo Woodall as translator Howie Triest.
Director James Vanderbilt spent 13 years working on Nuremberg, saying he wanted to provide ‘an exploration of what is the nature of evil’.
Speaking of the film’s importance in the current political climate, he said to NPR’s Morning Edition, it was ‘relevant but it isn’t a history lesson.’
‘It’s a thriller,’ he shared. ‘The first international tribunal ever organised, the first time film footage was used as evidence to show the world what this regime perpetrated. And the challenge was to put your personal feelings aside and try these men impartially, to allow the world to see what they had done.’
Nuremberg is now showing on Sky Cinema or available to rent on Amazon Prime, and it is a must-watch from last year’s releases.
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