‘Nuremberg’ movie: Russell Crowe and Rami Malek face off in a chilling postwar courtroom drama

The Nuremberg movie has arrived, putting two Oscar winners on a collision course inside history’s most consequential courtroom. Opening in U.S. and Canadian theaters on November 7, 2025 (with the UK rollout November 14), the film centers on the psychological duel between Hermann Göring—played with disquieting charisma by Russell Crowe—and U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, portrayed by Rami Malek. Rather than retell every facet of the trials, the drama drills into the battle of wits that unfolded behind prison walls and shaped the prosecution’s understanding of the Nazi leadership.

‘Nuremberg’ release date, runtime, and rating

• U.S./Canada: November 7, 2025 (wide theatrical)

• UK: November 14, 2025 (cinemas)

• Runtime: 148 minutes (2h 28m)

• Rating: PG-13 for disturbing images, violent content, smoking, brief drug content, and some language

Cast: who plays whom in the Nuremberg movie

• Russell Crowe — Hermann Göring

• Rami Malek — Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, the U.S. Army psychiatrist tasked with assessing Nazi defendants

• Michael Shannon — Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and chief U.S. prosecutor

• Richard E. Grant — Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, a leading British prosecutor

• John Slattery — Col. Burton C. Andrus, commandant of the Nuremberg prison

• Leo Woodall — Sgt. Howie Triest, translator working alongside Kelley

• Colin Hanks — Dr. Gustav Gilbert, fellow prison psychologist

• Plus ensemble turns as key defendants and military officials that fill out the tribunal’s charged atmosphere

Story and source material

Written and directed by James Vanderbilt, Nuremberg adapts the nonfiction book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, shifting the spotlight from courtroom theatrics to the intimate, unnerving interviews that probed the minds of the accused. The film follows Kelley’s mandate to determine competency, forcing him to confront the unsettling truth that many perpetrators were lucid, orderly, and disturbingly ordinary. That insight reframes the trials not just as a legal reckoning but as a study in power, persuasion, and moral collapse.

Why Russell Crowe and Rami Malek’s pairing matters

Crowe’s Göring is a performance built on contradictions—suave and bombastic, then icily strategic—testing the limits of Malek’s careful, clinical Kelley. Their exchanges are staged less like interrogations and more like chess matches, where each move grants leverage at the tribunal. The push-pull between a defendant eager to manipulate the narrative and a psychiatrist determined to map the psychology of atrocity gives the film its pulse.

How ‘Nuremberg’ frames the trial you think you know

While the title evokes the full sweep of the Nuremberg Trials, the movie narrows its lens to the people who decided what evidence would mean and how history would hear it. Scenes inside the prison—ledger books, interview rooms, ration trays—sit alongside tightly cut courtroom passages to show how testimony is shaped long before a witness takes the stand. The presence of Robert H. Jackson (Shannon) and Maxwell-Fyfe (Grant) anchors the broader legal strategy and the emerging architecture of international justice.

Craft and tone: a sober thriller

With photography that favors stark, institutional light and production design that recreates confinement with tactile precision, Nuremberg opts for a sober, procedural feel. The score leans restrained, surfacing most forcefully as archival images and testimony brush up against Kelley’s notes. The approach resists sensationalism; horror is confronted through documentation and the froideur of process, not grand guignol.

Key facts at a glance

• Director/Writer: James Vanderbilt

• Based on: real interviews and assessments conducted by U.S. Army psychiatrists following the war

• Focus: the psychological evaluation of Nazi leaders and the legal strategy that followed

• Themes: individual responsibility, the banality of evil, the fragility of democratic norms under charismatic manipulation

Where to watch and what’s next

Nuremberg is in theaters only at launch. International rollouts continue through November, with premium formats in select markets. Expect post-release conversations to home in on the film’s perspective shift—from courtroom spectacle to psychological inquiry—and on how its portrayal of Göring’s showmanship squares with the historical record. Awards-season chatter will likely center on Crowe’s and Malek’s performances and on Michael Shannon’s granite-steady turn as Jackson.

The Nuremberg movie reframes a landmark trial as a duel of minds, not just a parade of charges. Powered by Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, it’s a rigorously staged reminder that the world’s most important verdicts are often forged offstage, where language, ego, and conscience collide.