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Tom Alton wrote on 09/22/2004:

I recently purchased a DVD of this masterpiece. This is the most thought-provoking film I have seen. In a nutshell, it is a story of a judge who is called to be the leader of a tribunal who will decide the fates of several ex-Nazi judges charged for their parts in the systematic persecution and murders of political dissidents and excluded members of the Germany during the Third Reich. Spencer Tracey plays the judge's role in a most brilliant way. He portrays an American judge who must undergo the torment of looking at himself as a judge and human being and at a world fraught with indifference and evil.

This film is not for the faint-hearted--it is a raw and brutal drama. During one brutal court session, the prosecutor shows a film of the living dead and truly dead at various liberated concentration camps. How could a well-educated society deny the presence of this monstrosity? How could one of former Nazi judges, played by Burt Lancaster, pervert his brilliant legal gift to the cause of Nazism? Yet, did the Germans want to preserve their sence of order by following the increasingly insane laws of the Third Reich? Should the Germans be allowed to forget their past and now concentrate on rebuilding their land and also provide a Cold War buffer between the Soviet Bloc and Western Europe (The action takes place during the start of the Berlin Airlift)?

Do not even think of stopping this film until the end when the judge renders his decision/judgment against the accused. Before he makes his decisions, the judge makes a summation that is a brutal assessment of a fallability that cannot be swept under the proverbial rug.