NUREMBERG**

James Vanderbilt, screenwriter on iconic films such as David Fincher's ZODIAC, stages his directorial debut with NUREMBERG, a film about the trial of the infamous Nazi leader Hermann Goering.  

While trying hard to hue close to the historical record, Vanderbilt's script has two fatal flaws - it is patronising and it is far too pleased with itself.  The former manifests in endless passages of ham-fisted exposition, assuming that the viewer knows nothing and it is too stupid to figure it out.  This extends both to the historic events AND their contemporary resonance. 

The latter manifests in clever-clever cuts between lines of dialogue that flatly contradict each other for comic effect.  We get dumb action movie lines like "Welcome to Nuremberg" (insert mike drop), from dumb caricature characters like John Slattery's military prison guard. We get the same character anachronistically referring to two psychiatrists as "mental health professionals".  We get a desperately harrowing courtroom scene of real Holocaust footage shown and then a smash-cut to a cool jazz club and our protagonist flirting with a pretty journalist. Just no.

So this is a tonally jarring, condescending and obvious film containing a central bad performance from Rami Malek as US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelly. Why might it still be worth your time? A star each for Russell Crowe and Leo Woodall as Goering and Sergeant Howie Triest respectively. Crowe is absolutely magnificent as Goering - capturing his slippery charm, bonhomie, narcissism and at core his complete fanaticism.  It's a shame such a performance - Crowe's best in years - is wasted on this film.  And kudos to Leo Woodall, who recently impressed as the lead actor in TUNER.  As Howie, Woodall is the very moral and emotional heart of this film, far moreso than Malek's gurning shrink. Otherwise Shannon and poor Richard E Grant are mediocre in roles ill-written and under-serving their real life counterparts.

NUREMBERG is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 148 minutes. It played Toronto and San Sebastian. It was released in the USA last Friday and in the UK next Friday.