The 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai has been adapted by James Vanderbilt who also directs. It is set in 1946, when Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is challenged with determining if Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) is fit to stand at the Nuremberg trials.
This is not the first film to cover post war the Nazi trials, with 1961’s Judgement at Nuremberg retaining its power 60 years later. Nuremberg is more about the time leading up to the trials and, it is engrossing and, sometimes, surprising. Vanderbilt sensibly allows the story to breathe, so its two and a half hour run time did not feel excessive, even if it does not quite reach the heights of Stanley Kramer’s classic.
In fact it is when the trials starts that this film makes its greatest impact. There is a long passage where the American prosecutor, Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) plays footage from the liberation of the concentration camps. Those extracts are still sickening today, and I can only imagine the impact when they were shown in public for the first time in the court.
I am still not totally convinced by Malek as a leading man and his character seems pretty gullible for an eminent psychiatrist. Shannon is excellent though, and the fantastic Richard E. Grant steals every scene he is in as the British prosecutor.
Rating: 8 out of 10