“This story has had the Hollywood treatment. An impressive cast, big sets, intrusive music score and a dramatic historical script, all squarely aiming for an Oscar nomination. This film tries to fit a courtroom drama into a psychological drama and becomes guilty of overreach. The courtroom twists are contrived to add a drama that wasn’t there.”
Con Nats
3 Card Tricks
It’s a power roll of actors that have come together to revisit the events of the Nuremberg trials where a pack of nasty Nazis face an international court.
The trials are on shaky ground. There is no international law or court established that they can be tried in. There is a concern that the trials can become a soap box for the Nazis to make their case.
Enter card-tricking psychiatrist Douglas Kelly (Rami Malek), who is brought in to ensure his patients do not suicide before facing their fate. He establishes a bond with the imposing Hermann Göring (Russel Crowe) as he prods his defences to help the prosecution win their case.
Writer-director James Vanderbilt and Jack El-Hai’s script is an ambitious one. It is based on El-Hai’s non-fiction book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, about the relationship struck up between Kelly and Göring. It’s interesting ground and leads to some great scenes between Malek and Crowe. There might be two Oscar winners on screen but one shows the power of restraint while the other reaches for the
drama. Rusty really shines. It also tries to be a political courtroom drama. American prosecutor Justice Robert H.Jackson (Michael Shannon) is sacrificing a future on the Supreme Court to pursue this court case. He is ably supported by a British counsel David Maxwell Fife (Richard E. Grant) and they need Kelly to break his client confidence to help them. This ethical issue and the lack of an international court system are quickly dealt with as the focus is on many other issues. And the role of each man has been altered to fit a formula rather than reality, but these films should not be treated like documentaries.
The film also aims to bring back the horrors of the concentration camps with some overly-long footage. Vanderbilt seems to feel a new generation of neo-Nazis needs to see them, as older generations have seen them before. It could have been done more effectively and these scenes lacked the emotion they reached for.
The writers should have taken more account of the subtle sub-plot of translator, Howie (Leo Woodall) to deliver his message, who does well with little screen time. They obviously want to make the point that it’s happening again. As Goring says, Adolf made them “feel German again.” Red hat anyone?
This story has had the Hollywood treatment. An impressive cast, big sets, intrusive music score and a dramatic historical script, all squarely aiming for an Oscar nomination. This film tries to fit a courtroom drama into a psychological drama and becomes guilty of overreach. The courtroom twists are contrived to add a drama that wasn’t there. It also introduces a sub-plot of a relationship between Kelly and Goring’s daughter and wife which doesn’t have time to resolve itself.
Where it succeeds are the scenes between Malik and Crowe where it tries to dig under the skin of the Nazis. When Göring roars: “You think American bullets and bombs might kill [civilian] people? You vaporize 150,000 Japanese at the touch of a button, and you presume to stand in judgment of me for war crimes?” is one of the few times it digs beneath the surface. It also has touches of comedy and John Slattery as Colonel Burton C Andrus, adds some nice touches without trying.
The film is overly long but avoids boredom as it tries to makes its too many points and over reaches in its ambition. But its message is still a powerful one.
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Con Nats, On The Screen
