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To me, this movie is perfection.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Well done, as television movies go. There seems to have been a substantial budget and an awful lot of research behind it. There are times when points and characters are overstated, but it's an improvement over "Judgment at Nuremberg." This film puts the Nazi leaders on trial and finds most of them guilty of crimes against humanity, while others are sentenced to prison. "Judgment at Nuremberg" put the entire nation of Germany on trial, handed the thankless task of defending Germany's role in World War II to Maximilion Schell, and found every German who ever breathed to be guilty of every sin that's ever been committed in the history of humankind. The scriptwriter, Abby Mann, accepted his Academy Award "in the name of all intellectuals everywhere." This modest production fills in many of the blanks that are missing from the public's understanding of the Nuremberg trials. Where, for instance, did the prisoners and staff of the trials find housing in Nuremberg, an ancient city that had been flattened by Allied bombing and in which there were still hundreds of decomposing bodies beneath the rubble? And did all the four major powers -- the US, Britain, France and Russia agree on the format and the procedures? Answer: No, the Russians and the French, who had suffered most under Nazissm, wanted summary executions of all the bigwigs. The subject is dead serious but the program has its quietly amusing moments -- the brash, ugly Russian representative trying to persuade the horrified French representative that he should lace his fine wine with a good belt of vodka. It has the limitations of most commercial productions. The Russian guy really IS ugly, and almost all the Germans are played by men with names like O'Keefe. There are many choker closeups, a technique that befits the small screen.The Nazi leaders of course are villains of the worst sort but they're shown as humans too. After the surrender, an ebullient Goering, Brian Cox, unexpectedly drives up to an American Air Force base with his wife and child, dismounts from his chauffeur-driven car, and formally hands over his sword to an astounded General Spaatz -- "one airman to another." After being feted publicly, the victors soon round him up and place him in a cell, as had been done with the other prisoners. An American lieutenant, Tex Wheeler, is posted as Goering's personal guard. Scott Gibson gives a convincing performance. Wheelis will play a larger role in Goering's fate later.Alex Baldwin is Robert H. Jackson, who more or less runs the show. His assistant Jill Hennessy is a fox and the rest of the cast is quite good. There are too many airy conversations about moral superiority and the viewer is urged to want Baldwin to treat Georing on the stand as the despicable, conniving swine he is. Should he? How does the word "disinterested" differ from "uninterested"? The most chilling testimony comes from the Commandant of Auschwitz, who describes the camp's activities precisely and dispassionately -- showing neither indignation or remorse.Unfortunately, the prosecution insists on presenting not just documentary evidence but witnesses too, in order to deliberately heighten the drama behind the trial. It's pretty sickening, naturally, and to many adults it's repetitive. We know about the medical experiments in which Jews were kept in freezing water until they died. And so we sit through the familiar revolting images of the charred skeleton in the oven, the walking cadavers, the old man praying as he lies on a stretcher, the waxlike naked bodies piled on one another in mounds, the bulldozer shoveling them into the empty pit. I doubt that anyone needs to be REMINDED of what happened. But maybe it's just as well that we go through it all again because I'm not sure how much of this material has faded from our collective memory. One in six English youngsters thought Auschwitz was a World War II theme park, and one in six thought Hitler was a football coach.And, at that, there are some insights into what has always been a blank at least in my mind. Goering was head of the Luftwaffe. So? What did he have to do with the treatment of the Jews and other devalued minorities? Simple. The experiments that froze subjects to death in ice water were undertaken at his request in order to discover how Luftwaffe crew might best survive if shot down in northern waters. Except for a few, the defendants all seem like unregenerate Nazis. Well, except for Rudolf Hess too, because he was nuts. It may seem like a mistake to have Julius Streicher portrayed as a rabid anti-Semite, pounding the table, ranting against Jews, his features in a cataleptic sneer. But that was the kind of guy he really was. He wasn't a military man but his railing against the Jews amounted to paranoia. He combed the pages of the Talmud and the Old Testament in search of passages that painted Judaism as harsh or cruel, rather like some of us are now doing with the Koran. It's easy.Some of the prisoners, like Albert Speer, the architect who became Hitler's Armaments Minister, admit their guilt. Others rely on the rationale that they were only following orders. This excuse is always dismissed by civilized people but mistakenly in my opinion.Not in this case, perhaps, but for "only following orders" substitute "doing what I was expected to do," and we're all guilty, even if the "orders" are sometimes unspoken, in which case they're known as "command pressure" or "peer pressure" or "keeping up with the Joneses." One doubtful ex-Nazi, Hans Frank, puts it this way: "I wanted to keep my job." Suppose, instead of "job", we substitute "public opinion" or "the respect of my community"? From a sociological point of view, the intricacies are myriad.

Quite a few reviewers seem to be taken by the historicity of this movie. It's true that many of the details are correct - but it is also true that many others are wildly incorrect. The most egregious one is the romantic liaison between Justice Jackson and his assistant. I guess that the producers introduced the romantic element for the sake of a wider appeal, but the fact is that, in light of the actual events, this looks ridiculous. Which is a shame, for the movie would have been far more valuable without that silliness. It's mostly because of this that I don't think that it deserves more than 5 points. The bright sides are Brian Cox's and Michael Ironside's performances, and also, but to a lesser extent, Christopher Plummer's and Matt Craven's. Alec Baldwin delivers the same kind of underwhelming performance that he usually does, and Jill Hennessy does whatever she can with her inane and fictitious part.In summary, it could have been a good movie, but it is just a decent one.

I think I'm in good company on this web page. Most subscribers are serious and articulate. Years of intently watching history-based films, however, have led me to a sense of respectful appreciation of the problems faced by the writers, directors, and cinematographers (but mostly the directors) involved in making such films. I think Alec Baldwin is a responsible, mature, serious-minded film maker; he saw, in this vehicle, an opportunity to dramatize the great question of our time, one that was well expressed by Albert Speer in his final comment: history has catalogued a steady progression in man's ability to destroy humanity by military-technical means. Where will the next step take us? Those who made this miniseries had to shape a vast body of material into a dramatic whole. How to present the dramatic confrontation between four more-or-less allied powers and more than twenty defendants? throughout a war that involved millions of combatants and tens of millions of victims? and extended over six years? It's not an easy job! The solution was, first, to highlight the confrontation between Robert Jackson, the prosecutor, and Herman Goehring, a clever, articulate, intelligent man who was the highest-ranking defendant, and who more than held his own in the courtroom give-and-take. The second solution was to feature the psychologist in his series of interviews of the defendants. The Greeks had a word, "phronesis," which meant something like our term "self-awareness," and involved the individual's recognition of his own wrongdoing. For the most part, the psychologist had limited success in getting the defendants to come to terms with their own criminal acts.Limited as this two-fold solution may have been, the plan made sense to me. It's only a movie, after all. Those who wished for more out of the series can always go into the historical record. I myself have always had questions about the Hess and Donitz verdicts.As for the "love interest," (that durable old Hollywood term!), I can always be forgiving of any movie that features Jill Hennessy, who is destined to succeed Myrna Loy as the perfect movie wife.

"Second Nature" is the kind of movie that makes me long for the great motion pictures of the past 50 years. Allow me to be as redundant about this movie. "Second Nature" is a really badly written and badly made movie. I say this with over a thousand motion pictures on my shelf as a collector and "movie buff" for the last 50 years. I know of which I speak. If you have two hours to waste, do some exercises or volunteer to help someone who needs help, but don't waste your two hours including commercials, watching what is a really bad movie. Fortunately, I recorded it and watched it twice to make sure before I wrote this, and then regretted the waste of all that time.Alec Baldwin is a better actor than one who had to do a script like this. He must have made someone very angry in the motion picture business. A line from "Tootsie" is applicable here when Sidney Pollack as Dustin Hoffman's agent says to Hoffman, as Michael Dorsey, "No one will hire you, you're too much trouble,..." Has Alec Baldwin become too much trouble? If not, I can't understand why he's not doing better scripts and making better motion pictures. In the first picture I saw him featured in, "The Hunt For Red October," I saw a very good, new actor. His not making the second Tom Clancy motion picture, "Patriot Games," secured Harrison Ford's position as ‘the' major actor born after 1940. I hope Baldwin was paid well for this abysmal remake of all the so called adventure films made for TV recently. I hope Mr. Baldwin understands I'm not trying to only be critical of him, but would like to see him in good movie or better, good motion picture. I'm awaiting the arrival of "Nuremberg" and hoping it's a better work than "Second Nature." I hope Mr. Baldwin shares this with his present agent.