Nuremberg (2025)

1/2

I watched that Nuremberg movie today and I gotta say, I’m very confused; I just don’t get why HollyJew would put out this flick. I mean, I can absolutely see why they would make a propaganda piece about the Nuremberg trials – but this isn’t a movie generally about that particular miscarriage of justice, it’s instead primarily a movie about the prosecution of Hermann Göring. Which, again, is why I’m so confused, because by focusing on Göring you’re almost inevitably going to end up with a movie where the Nazis ultimately “win”, at least from a dramatic point of view.

I’m especially confused about why they’d cast Russell Crowe as the Reich Marshal, because while the New Zealand-born actor might not quite be the towering figuring in cinema that he was 20 years ago, he’s still a big name who has built up tons of good will with moviegoers over the years. Even more importantly, he’s one of the few truly masculine mainstream actors left – even if you put him in a Fat Suit, Crowe is still gonna come across as far more of a Real Man that pretty much anyone else Modern Hollywood can pair him with – and the Testosterone Gap becomes even more extreme when he’s pitted up against someone as creepy and awkward as Rami Malek, who plays US army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, tasked getting into Göring’s head and ensuring that he doesn’t kill himself before the Allies can.

Beyond just physiognomy and aura, the critical problem with Kelly as our protagonist and big foil to Göring is that his whole character arc involves him repeatedly violating doctor-patient privilege (supposedly for the greater good) and committing various acts of personal betrayal to sabotage Göring’s ability to defend himself (wait, I thought that was the whole point of this trial?). We’re obviously meant to cheer this on, because Nazis are the Ultimate Evil, but I actually think that Normal people are naturally repulsed by lies and betrayal – at least normal White people are.

Meanwhile, Göring is never truly caught in a lie – while the movie certainly strongly suggests that he was lying about not knowing about the Holocaust, he’s never truly exposed as a liar and a fraud. Sure, we’re MEANT to hate him because Nazi Leader, and because we’re shown extensive footage from the death camps, but on a purely psychological level (how ironic), I think many if not most people will have a stronger emotional response to witnessing despicable acts being carried out against individuals than seeing countless corpses we know nothing about. Especially since, you know, Göring never actually killed any of those people – while Kelly DID pretend to be looking out for Göring’s wife and daughter even after the Americans had arrested them in a petty act of vengeance.

The movie’s third major character, US Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg Prosecutor Robert Jackson, initially comes across as noble and high-minded, but as the movie goes on he’s steadily diminished as a paragon of principle, and then his big confrontation with Göring ends on such a disastrous note that I can’t help but be reminded of Biden’s 2024 debate with Trump…but more on that later.

Indeed, the only character who actually WORKS as an anti-Nazi hero is the very Aryan-looking German-born US soldier and interpreter Howie Triest, who actually turns out to be Jewish. His personal story is compelling, he displays great physical courage and patriotism, and when he has the chance to kick a particular Nazi leader while he’s down (a moment he had in fact long looked forward to), he instead decides to be the bigger man. I can’t help but think that if Hollywood still had its finger on the American public's pulse to at least SOME extent, this movie would have been far more focused on Howie Triest than on the exceptionally unethical psychiatrist.