Blu-ray Review: ‘Burnt’ starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller

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John Wells, the prolific television producer, is now The Weinstein Company’s favorite director. It’s easy to see why. His projects attract top-shelf talent, he’s clearly easy to work with and he picks Oscar-baity subjects. His second film with the Weinsteins, Burnt, might make them question their relationship with him. The film, which stars American Sniper co-stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller, hits Blu-ray today.

Burnt is a typical movie about redemption, in which everything ultimately goes right for our hero, chef Adam Jones (Cooper). You can see where the movie is going the moment it starts. Jones had himself run out of Paris after he burned too brightly. After splitting his 1 millionth oyster in New Orleans, he decides to head back to Europe and go after his third Michelin star.

Once he arrives in London, he decides to get the gang back together, even though some of his old Paris friends hate him. The team includes maitre'd Tony (Daniel Bruhl) and chef Michel (Omar Sy). He also recruits Helene (Miller) and the young hopeful David (Sam Keeley). He forces his way back into the London fine dining scene. At first, he doesn’t succeed, but he must try, try, try again to get what he wants.

Written by Steven Knight from a story by Michael Kalesniko, Burnt is straightforward and fails to do much of anything new. At least the performances make the film easy to sit through, but Wells doesn’t make it easy to buy the possibility that Helene and Adam have to be romantically involved. He just takes us for granted, because we assume movies like these need a romantic B-plot. In fact, Wells filmed a scene where they even end up living together, but preview audiences told him that it was so unbelievable that it was cut.

Wells also doesn’t pull any tricks to tell this story. He relies so much on montages of chefs cooking that you might think he’s more interested in having food fill the frame than his human characters. The director and cinematographer Adriano Goldman don’t try anything fancy with the camera.

Burnt is a movie put together by professionals who want to have such a polished final project that they scrub any chance of originality away. You know Cooper can’t fail and when he does, you know he’ll be back to try again because there’s still a half-hour left of the film.

Burnt (which at one time was just called Chef and then Adam Jones) hits Blu-ray with a few features. Wells and Executive Chef Consultant Marcus Wareing recorded a commentary and 10 minutes of deleted scenes are included. (This includes the scene with Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan.) There’s also a behind-the-scenes featurette and 20 minutes of Q&A highlights.