Russell Crowe embodies one of the biggest cogs in the Nazi war machine in a new image from Nuremberg. Crowe stars as Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering in the post-World War II drama. The film will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month before being released in theaters by Sony Pictures Classics on November 7.
In the new image, Crowe is decked out in full military regalia; Goering, a fighter pilot in World War I and head of Germany’s WWII-era air force, the Luftwaffe, was notoriously vain, and extremely particular about his grooming and wardrobe. The image depicts him striding across a debris-strewn battlefield, one of many that his minions carved out of the European soil; his own uniform remains spotless and unstained, just as Goering remained safely hidden in the heart of Germany as his Luftwaffe rained terror across the continent. Goering was one of Adolf Hitler’s top lieutenants, but fell out of favor with his master when his Luftwaffe failed to crush the United Kingdom’s spirit and infrastructure in the Battle of Britain, ending the Führer’s dreams of a swift and decisive victory. He was the most prominent member of the political and military hierarchy of the Third Reich to survive the fall of Berlin, and was the star defendant at the Nuremberg Trials. In 2000’s Nuremberg, a miniseries dramatization of the trial, Brian Cox starred as Goering.
What Is ‘Nuremberg’ About?
Set during the Nuremberg Trials that put Nazi Germany’s rulers on trial for crimes against humanity, Nuremberg stars Rami Malek as Douglas Kelley, an American intelligence officer and psychiatrist who was assigned to assess whether the various imprisoned Nazis were competent to stand trial. He found many of them to be pathetic mediocrities with delusions of grandeur, but engaged in a battle of wits with the cunning, bombastic Goering. Kelley will have to determine if Goering was a willful perpetrator of genocide, or a raving madman…or both, with the legitimacy of the post-war order at stake. The film also stars Leo Woodall, Michael Shannon, Colin Hanks, Richard E. Grant, John Slattery, Wrenn Schmidt, and Lotte Verbeek as Goering’s wife, Emmy.
Nuremberg was written and directed by James Vanderbilt, the scribe behind Zodiac; this is his sophomore directorial effort, after 2015’s Truth. It is an adaptation of Jack El-Hai’s nonfiction book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.
Nuremberg will be released in theaters on November 7. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
