Metacritic reviews

On the point of the fundamental issue in the Nazi war guilt trials that were held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, Stanley Kramer, the producer-director, has pinned a powerful, persuasive film. The major weakness, perhaps, of the whole thing is that it is inevitably compressive and sometimes glib. The strength and wonder of it is that it manages to say so much that still needs to be said.

Though unrelentingly bleak, Judgment at Nuremberg is absorbing from beginning to end.

There are no surprises in the direction, and Abby Mann's screenplay plays the expected tunes, but there's enough conviction on display to reward a patient spectator.

Judgment at Nuremberg is twice the size of the concise, stirring and rewarding production on television's Playhouse 90 early in 1959. A faster tempo by producer-director Stanley Kramer and more trenchant script editing would have punched up picture.

Gavin Lambert summed it up: An all-star concentration-camp drama, with special guest-victim appearances.

On the whole, Director Kramer has almost arrogantly exceeded his judicial warrant. He has also crudely mismanaged both actors and camera, and has carelessly permitted several reels of fat to accumulate around the movie's middle.

Grandstanding 1961 courtroom drama about the Nazi war trials, courtesy of producer-director Stanley Kramer, breast-beating screenwriter Abby Mann, and an all-star cast—watchable enough on its own terms, but insufferably glib next to something like Shoah.