Russell Crowe has portrayed more than his fair share of notorious characters, but his latest movie Nuremberg sees him outdoing everything he’s done before by playing a literal Nazi.
Crowe got Oscar buzz for his work as infamous Nazi Hermann Göring when Nuremberg premiered at TIFF, and now Sony Pictures Classics has dropped a new trailer for the World War 2 drama, which releases on November 7.
Nuremberg begins in the wake of World War 2, when the allies were combing Europe in search of surviving members of the defeated Nazi regime. The trailer shows Crowe’s Göring being arrested by American forces, and placed in prison to await trial.
The clip then introduces the film’s second main character, Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek), the psychiatrist tasked with examining Göring and his fellow Nazis ahead of the trial. Exposition is worked into the clip, as Kelley learns what he will be up against in the super-intelligent former Chief of the Luftwaffe.
The trailer sets up the drama surrounding Kelley’s examination of Göring, which turns into a battle of wits between the emotional American and the steely German. The action in Nuremberg is not of the combat variety, like in so many other World War 2 films, but plays out on the battlefield of morality as an unrepentant Göring pits his intellect against Kelley’s.
Also popping up in the trailer are Nuremberg stars Michael Shannon, John Slattery, Colin Hanks, and Richard E. Grant.
The clip touts the good reviews the movie received while showing at TIFF, but not all critics were sold on Nuremberg, leaving it with a 60% Rotten Tomatoes score coming out of the festival. The positive reviews highlighted the movie’s strong courtroom scenes and compelling characters, with Crowe receiving particular praise for his terrifying and brilliant performance.
Crowe’s performance indeed impressed critics enough to generate awards buzz, though that cooled off somewhat as Nuremberg’s mixed-bag of reviews continued coming in. Were Crowe to snag an Oscar nomination, it would be his first since 2002.
World War 2 films like Nuremberg are usually strong awards-season contenders, but it seems unlikely that writer-director James Vanderbilt’s depiction of the 20th Century’s most significant trial will prove to be this year’s Zone of Interest, let alone its Schindler’s List.
Nuremberg hits movie screens 64 years after the release of Judgment at Nuremberg, the definitive Hollywood portrayal of the history-making war tribunal, which received 11 Academy Award nominations, with Maximilian Schell winning for Best Actor, and Abby Mann for Best Adapted Screenplay.
