Burnt

At That Other Movie Blog we have a special relationship with the food film. We don't know whether it's just the fact that they are always slightly weird or if it's because we love food porn. Director John Wells dives headlong into this genre, but unlike Chef's take on street food or The Hundred Foot Journey's exploration of a home cooked experience, Burnt takes into the high stakes kitchen of a high end restaurant.

Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) is a chef looking to get back on top of his game. After shucking a million oysters in Louisiana, he journeys to London where he seeks out old friend Tony (Daniel Brühl), who is mâitre d' at a high end restaurant. Adam reveals to Tony that he has come back to get a third Michelin star, the highest honour a chef can attain. To do this he acquires his own dream team of chefs, including Michel (Omar Sy), David (Sam Keeley) and Helene (Sienna Miller).

I'm pretty sure that the food film is the 2010's equivalent of the 80's action movie because it has all the same beats one of them. Guy who was once on top has hit rock bottom and through a series of montages defeats the bad guys and comes out on top. In the case with Burnt, the bad guys are Adam's own demons who are getting in the way of him being able to achieve that third Michelin star. I'm not entirely convinced though that this is an interesting enough conflict for a film like this because it forces the other characters to just fade into exposition or motivation for the main character.

And the other characters do suffer. Daniel Brühl's Tony only serves to hint at the life that Adam used to live. Young up-and-coming chef David goes around and tells everyone what a god Adam used to be. Characters like Michel and Helene are both different motivations that drive Adam forward, but that's all they serve as. There was a real missed opportunity in making rival chef Reece (played by Matthew Rhys) a bigger part of the film. The same could be said of Adam's ex-girlfriend Anne Marie (Alicia Vikander), who appears in only two scenes just to make a little bit of unnecessary conflict.

I'm not sure if the London setting was a good choice, or why they didn't take advantage of it more. I understand that it is a city where the Michelin Guidebook holds a lot of weight, moreso than any US city, but at the same time not as much as other European cities, but Burnt doesn't really go out of its way to show that London is a culinarily interesting city. Yes, we do get shown a lot of the multicultural influence that immigrants have on the food culture, but these forays are all too brief, oftentimes being shown in the films many montages.

The performances are all fairly average, with no one really sticking out. Cooper's sociopathic performance doesn't really make him relatable apart from a heart touching scene where he makes a cake for Helene's daughter. Sienna Miller reunites with Cooper again after American Sniper and proves to me once again that they have no chemistry. Brühl can make any performance his own, but Tony feels too much like a weak background character. Omar Sy is very understated in this film and would probably give a better performance in a better film, which this is not.

I wouldn't say I disliked this film, but I also wouldn't say that I liked it either. It's definitely a movie that you have to go and eat at a restaurant after, even if it's Burger King, because the one thing I did learn from Burnt is that there's nothing wrong with a Whopper.