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James Vanderbilt’s Nuremburg looks at a lesser-known aspect of the famous war crimes trials, focusing on the role of psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), charged with probing the personalities of high-ranking Nazi defendants and keeping them alive, i.e. preventing them from committing suicide.  The film probes in particular, Kelley’s relationship with Hermann Goering (Russell Crowe).  When Goering’s strong and charming personality begins to overwhelm Kelley, another psychiatrist is brought in and, eventually, Kelley is relieved of his duties altogether.  A conversation with his interpreter Howie Triest (Leo Woodall), a fair-haired, Munich-born Jew and only member of his family to escape to America, reminds Kelley why the trials are being held in the first place, and, turning over his notes to lead prosecutor Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), he returns to observe the proceedings.  In the course of the trial, a lengthy and gruesome film depicting the dead and dying in numerous concentration camps is shown, cementing the Allies’ case against the Nazi officials, but Jackson, nevertheless, falters in cross-examining the wily, defensive Goering. British assistant prosecutor Maxwell Fyfe (Richard E. Grant) steps in and draws Goering into admitting his undying loyalty to Adolf Hitler.  Goering is convicted, but, elusive to the end, succeeds in committing suicide, thus avoiding the ignominy of being hanged.  Kelley writes a book about his experiences, and the film ends with him arguing with a broadcaster over his thesis that the Germans were not uniquely evil, but that a Holocaust could happen anywhere, even in America.

                  This last scene confirms one’s suspicion that the film is intended as agit-prop as much as a retelling of a lesser known bit of history, a reminder that ordinary people can get swept up into an evil system when a strong and unscrupulous personality finds its way into power, that free and fair elections may nevertheless produce such an aberration, and that the “rule of law” may mean the rule of unjust laws.  Justice, the film reminds us, is never guaranteed.

                  The film is peppered with anachronistic language.  “No pressure,” to “own [a situation],” to “eat [someone] for lunch,” to “trash [something],” meaning to say bad things about it, are a few of the expressions included in the dialogue that were never used in the 1940s.  One has to wonder if the filmmaker, who also wrote the script, was simply unaware or if he included these to intensify the impression that this story could be taking place today, or someday soon, if we’re not careful.