Burnt, film review: Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller's restaurant offering is no 'culinary orgasm'

John Wells' film has all the right ingredients, but they have been mixed together totally wrong

Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller in Burnt

Burnt is fusion filmmaking, a movie about a troubled chef that begins al dente, like a hard-nosed action movie, but ends every bit as gooey as the cake that the chef reluctantly bakes for a doe-eyed little girl on her birthday.

In terms of its production values, it is very well made. Scenes inside the kitchen are shot in frenetic style, using a mix of steadicam and fast editing, while the food itself, is depicted in a lovingly fetishistic fashion reminiscent of Sunday magazine photoshoots. There is much talk of “culinary orgasm” and director John Wells throws in plenty of shots of diners masticating blissfully. Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller, reunited on screen after last year’s American Sniper, give committed and likeable performances but battle against the sheer contrivances and strange mix of ingredients in an over-egged screenplay.

Early on, Adam Jones (Cooper) behaves like Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen or Stallone in an Expendables movie. The leather clad Jones is all machismo as he comes to London to get the old team together for one last mission. They’re not going to attack the Nazis or rob a bank. Their goal is a third Michelin star.

Bradley Cooper stars as a once-successful chef who’s trying to get his career cooking again in ‘Burnt’ (Rex)

Jones is a once brilliant chef who burnt himself out in an orgy of drug taking and broken relationships. He has been piecing his life back together by shucking oysters in New Orleans and is now ready for redemption. Cooper plays him like a cross between Gordon Ramsay and Marlon Brando in his mushy Last Tango In Paris phase. Sienna Miller is the sous chef Helene, trying to balance punishing hours in the kitchen while bringing up her daughter as a single mom. German actor Daniel Bruhl, seen not so long ago as the ruthless Formula 1 driver Nikki Lauda, plays the maitre d’ who gives Jones his second chance. Una Thurman has a bizarre cameo as the Evening Standard’s restaurant critic, a lesbian who nevertheless once had a fling with Jones.

In order to give Burnt an authentic taste, the filmmakers recruited real-life chef Marcus Wareing to advise the actors. Steven Knight’s screenplay has its share of witty one-liners and the film has a very lively supporting cast that includes Matthew Rhys as Jones’s arch-rival, Omay Sy as the chef’s sidekick and Alicia Vikander as a Marlene Dietrich-like femme fatale who could have stumbled out of an old film noir. The problem here is that the filmmakers seem fatally uncertain what kind of movie they want to dish up - whether they are making an intense, character-driven kitchen drama or a very sugary romcom.