The first time I saw this film I did not realize how true to history it was – it is based on a minor and not wellknown episode – and also felt it was very Hollywood. I appreciated it better on a second viewing. This Smithsonian article is useful on the facts of history:
But a lot of the dialogue – which had to be invented, of course – was very heavy-handed. From Daniel Goldstraw’s review in The Independent (which is more balanced than this extract):
The film is one that is often also prone to moments that feel cliched or predictable: the Jewish army officer who states he will he smoke after the war is done and then finally pulls out a cigarette at the close of the film, or the judge who, for some reason, feels he can only hammer home his point about the evils of the Nazis by taking Kelley in the middle of the night to the site of Hiler’s rallies. These all stand out as scenes where one can practically feel the screenwriter typing away behind them.
Very small historical video clips in the trial scenes show how closely the trial was recreated – for instance, that Göring did not stand immediately when the other defendants did. I would have liked the clips to be longer but that wasn’t their purpose. I knew that the ashes of the hanged defendants were scattered along a river in Munich to prevent graves becoming sites of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis. I did not know that the hanging was done publicly – as of course it always was, there had to be witnesses, and these included two journalists for each of the four Allies.
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