Movie Review: Burnt
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
Burnt is a classic story of redemption set amidst the cutthroat world of the culinary arts. That being the case, one can expect this review to be peppered with bad cooking metaphors and references. I apologize in advance.
How do you make the perfect film about cooking? Add one dash of a magnetic Bradley Cooper. Stir in two ounces of lovable supporting characters. Drop in one measure of a love story, complete with the doe-eyed Sienna Miller. Beat in one Emmy-winning tested director – John Wells. Drizzle the talents of writer Steven Knight over the whole project and voila, there you have it. Right? Well yes and no. Burnt is a film that has lots of heart, but yearns to be something more substantial and that’s where it fails. Ultimately, when you take it out of the oven, you’re left with one deflated soufflé; one that has all the right ingredients but just doesn’t look like the glossy picture in the cookbook. What do we do with it now? You can’t serve it to the esteem members of the culinary world, but it would be a shame to just throw it out. Such is Burnt.
Let’s start with Cooper. He plays Adam Jones, a recovering addict who was once atop the world of competitive cooking. He has lost everything and has a gang of mischievous underworld drug dealers after him. His dream is to achieve the elusive third Michelin star, something he was so close to grasping at his time in a prestigious Paris restaurant. Just like any recovering addict, he has tried to compensate for his addiction with trying to be the best. He screams and shouts, breaks dishes and poaches talented chefs from other restaurants. He is a loose cannon who will stop at nothing to achieve perfection. Cooper shines as Jones. He portrays the character with so much angst you can almost taste it. He is hypnotic in every scene and I wouldn’t be surprised if he garnered another best actor nomination for his turn as the down on his luck chef.
The supporting cast is also something to marvel at. Front and center is Daniel Brühl as Tony. The stoic and hard nosed maître d. He is in love with Adam and wants him to succeed, even though our chef de cuisine singlehandedly sunk his father’s restaurant with his addiction. Brühl is perfectly understated as Tony and can express his inner motivations with a single look. He is perfectly cast and almost elevates the film from the land of mediocrity.
Sienna Miller plays Helene. She is a talented, yet modest, chef who Adam feels has yet to achieve her potential. He arranges for her to be fired from her job, so she has no choice, but to work with the wayward chef. Her casting is problematic. Cooper and Miller have played love interests before, in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. For much of the film, the pair’s chemistry is slightly off balance. Miller inhabits her role as Helene with a precocious charm, but when she and Cooper are on screen together their chemistry is almost nonexistent. The audience can’t quite believe the two could ever fall in love, because of the way Cooper’s character is written. It’s apparent he is in love with himself more than he could ever be with the innocuous Miller. It’s the scenes between the two of them where the film really flounders.
The film is rife with heart. We want to see Adam succeed, and we want him to clean up his act. We want him to be the chef he knows he can be. Also, food has never looked quite as scrumptious. It’s impossible to watch Burnt on an empty stomach. You will leave the theater wondering where you can get your next meal.
However, Burnt does little to scratch the surface. We never spend any time inside of Adam’s psyche, learning what makes him tick. We laugh at his interactions with other chefs, and gasp when something goes terribly wrong near the end of the movie. However, when the credits roll, the audience is ultimately disappointed at wondering what an incendiary film this could’ve been. Considering the whole pictorial display, Burnt is nothing more than a glorified hour and forty-five minute episode of Top Chef.
Matt Santia
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