Movies that depict the history of war criminals on trial will almost always be worth making and worth watching. These films are edifying (and cathartic) in a way that could almost be considered a public service, and that’s what works best in James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg,” about the international tribunal that put the Nazi high command on trial in the immediate wake of World War II, a film that is well-intentioned and elucidating, despite some of its execution missteps.

For his second directorial effort, Vanderbilt, a journeyman screenwriter best known for his “Zodiac” screenplay, adapts “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai, about the curious clinical relationship between Dr. Douglas Kelley, a Army psychiatrist, and former German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, in the lead up to

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