Trying to incorporate the gargantuan themes of justice, morality and the psychology of evil into mainstream entertainment, “Nuremberg” director Yves Simoneau creates a wide-ranging, brisk and informative work, but one that feels satisfied with merely touching on all the issues rather than exploring them. The result for the TNT event mini is an engaging but mostly unprovocative pic, a decent, slickly packaged, but not especially thoughtful, primer about the true “trial of the century.”
Alec Baldwin, looking every bit the 1940s movie star, plays Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court justice who served as chief prosecutor at the war crimes tribunal that followed the atrocities of the Holocaust. The first part of the film follows Jackson and his indispensable secretary Elsie Douglas (Jill Hennessy) as they put together the elements of the trial.In a quick rush of scenes, some of the most essential decisions are made, especially involving who in fact should be prosecuted. Demonstrating the fact that this trial is as symbolic as it is judicial, Jackson decides on a representative sample of German leaders from all areas of the Third Reich. The defendants are incarcerated, bossed around by stern jailer Colonel Andrus (Michael Ironside), and psychoanalyzed by army shrink Gustav Gilbert (Matt Craven).
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Hitler’s No. 2, Hermann Goering, is thetruly great role in the film, far more interesting than Baldwin’s Jackson, and Brian Cox delivers another of those brilliant performances that classical British actors seem to turn out routinely when playing villains. Cox’s Goering is commanding not just because he can bellow louder than everyone else, but because, even facing certain execution, he remains the ever-charming bon vivant.
In the courtroom, cinematographer Alain Dostie effectively shoots Goering and Jackson staring at each other as if this were a battle between a matador and a bull.
Meanwhile, Jackson must contend with the whiny, narcissistic prattle of American judge Francis Biddle (Len Cariou), even as British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe (Christopher Plummer) is reminding the chief prosecutor that the trial is partly a show.
An extra-marital affair between Jackson and Elise feels gratuitous given the gravity of the trial.
Unlike the 1961 Stanley Kramer film “Judgment at Nuremberg,” this version of events does not place the core debate over individual responsibility, but rather whether the defendants recognize their clear culpability.
As such, the primary foil for the non-repentant Goering is not Jackson, but the remorseful Albert Speer, who wants to find a way to admit guilt without condemning himself to death. With the psychologist Gilbert in the middle, the two Germans battle for the souls of their fellow defendants, who remain too undefined to make the audience care about them.
Filled with intelligence, but trying to do too much, Rintels’ screenplay, adapted from Joseph Persico’s book, ends up asking lots of intriguing questions but never satisfyingly develops them. Gilbert’s only conclusion, for example, is that the non-repentant Germans are lacking in empathy for their fellow man.While the film moves well and always looks good — tech credits are excellent — it also seems to have a glossy coating throughout that makes it feel unreal and unwilling to get at the heart of the matter. Only once does “Nuremberg” hit a deep, emotional chord, and that’s when images taken during the liberation of the concentration camps are shown in court — it’s the real footage, and it’s extremely potent.
But when the characters are debating morality and politics, “Nuremberg” seems fundamentally contrived and self-important.
