Burnt (2015)

There is a moment in Burnt when a man yells about a scallop, and we understand that we are in for two hours of a very specific kind of suffering. Bradley Cooper plays Adam Jones, a chef who torched his own career with cocaine and tantrums, then shucked a million oysters in New Orleans to earn the right to be insufferable in London instead. The film wants to be about redemption. Mostly it is about plating. John Wells directs with the grim efficiency of a line cook who has stopped asking why.

The ensemble is quietly international, which is to its credit. Omar Sy, Daniel Bruhl, Riccardo Scamarcio, and Alicia Vikander fill out the kitchen and the margins, and none of them are asked to announce themselves as anything. Sy's Michel carries real weight in the plot, though the film never once considers race a subject worth raising. Sienna Miller's Helene arrives as a single mother with genuine talent, gets publicly humiliated, quits, is bought back with a doubled salary, and eventually receives credit for the kitchen's triumph. She is competent and she is also a device for a man's growth, which is the oldest recipe in the book.

What the film does believe in, sincerely and at length, is teamwork. The final act converts Adam from tyrant to facilitator, and the third Michelin star arrives as a reward for listening to one's colleagues. It is a lovely sentiment delivered without much nagging, more shrug than sermon. There is no climate anxiety here, no appetite for eating the rich, no commentary on bodies, and no interest in neurodivergence, only the familiar conflation of genius with poor impulse control. The restaurants are temples of capital and the film genuflects accordingly. A modest, well-cast, faintly exhausted film about a man learning to share credit. We have seen it before, and we will see it again, probably with a better sauce.