Bradley Cooper’s Burnt Rejects Gordon Ramsay’s Angry Management Style
Steven Knight and Michael Kalesniko’s 2015 food flick Burnt promises more ambition than it’s capable of bringing, with an overstuffed cast, far too many loose ends, two-dimensional stereotypes, and less depth than a Kardashian special — yet boldly challenges ethos when it counts. BAFTA winner and Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper shines as talented jackass Adam Jones, a cooking prodigy with a questionable past, a distinguished culinary record, and a penchant for workplace abuse — with all the goods to back it up.
Jones was an up-and-coming executive chef with two Michelin stars under his belt; for ten years, he worked in Paris under the watchful eye of his mentor, the famous Jean-Luc, and was poised to take the culinary world by storm. Unfortunately, his meteoric rise to the top soon crumbled from the weight of his overinflated ego. Unapologetically cruel and swimming in literal debauchery, Jones lost himself in “booze, drugs, and women,” and the job along with it. The movie kicks off in New Orleans, Louisiana, with Jones on self-imposed exile, shucking one-million oysters for a year as penance for his vices. All sobered up, he quickly sets off for London, where he plans to open a restaurant and finally secure his third Michelin star.
The film’s monumental production costs — coupled with Gordon Ramsay’s high-profile endorsement, Mario Batali’s recipes, and Marcus Wareing’s professional involvement — did little to help against Burnt’s self-induced cornucopia of dissatisfied viewers and critics. Since opening night five years ago, Bradley Cooper’s ambitious take on the mercurial, audacious nature of Michelin-star cooking was met with less fanfare than a seventh Resident Evil movie, practically reviled by the foodies it swore to represent. The film was accused of glorifying abuse in the kitchen, romanticizing unstable power dynamics, advocating for ruthless perfectionism at the expense of mutual camaraderie, and perpetuating an already detractive restaurant culture ceaselessly memorialized in shows like MasterChef and Hell’s Kitchen, propagated to infamy by the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Alvin Leung, and Marco Pierre White.
For good reason — protagonist-hero Adam Jones is a self-aggrandizing scumbag that spends most of the film legitimizing workplace bullying, claiming his talent made him do it. Psychiatrist Dr. Rosshilde (played to form by Emma Thompson) is responsible for monitoring Adam’s narcotics intake and confirms he hasn’t relapsed in the slightest, yet the young chef remains as reckless and needlessly aggressive as ever. What started out as an anti-drugs campaign ballooned into a question of Jones’s character; are we rooting for a complex protagonist, or a clueless villain tragically portrayed as the hero? The answer is deliberately made ambiguous, with Jones fluctuating rapidly between human and sociopathic, depending on the externals involved. The film inevitably makes it clear, however, that Jones’s methods are dated and contemptuous, and ends the story fully advocating against further workplace aggression.
Misfortune follows Adam like a plague throughout most of Burnt. Daniel Brühl’s Tony Belardi, Jean-Luc’s former maître d’, initially refuses to hire him. Competing restaurant owner Michel brawls with him in a London alley, agrees to come on board The Langham as Adam’s sous chef, but sabotages his dish during a suspected Michelin visit, in a revenge plot that almost feels formulaic. Rival chef and former coworker Reece dislikes him immensely, and thinks him an obnoxious prick. Food critic Simone revels at Adam’s past failures. His disgruntled Parisian drug dealers want him dead. A London journalist trashes his restaurant in the papers shortly before opening night. Local chefs begrudge his arrogance. He intimidates and frightens younger cooks. He is widely resented. Nobody wants to work with him. Former colleagues are none too happy seeing him again. Adam Jones is both a pariah and a culinary savant that fosters chaos and furthers gastronomy in equal measure. He is a prized gourmand that endeavors to rejoin a world that still eyes perfection, but no longer supports his vision. A conveniently misconstrued Michelin visit — coupled by a well-placed emotional breakdown — has Adam Jones finally coming to his senses and learning to trust in his staff over apathetically lording over them. Adam immediately humbles down and soon earns his much-coveted third Michelin star. The story of Adam Jones is a cautionary tale about an awful work boss turned good. It never wanted to apotheosize workplace abuse.
In an image-obsessed world oversaturated with reality shows and calculatedly false fronts, it’s uncommon for a foodie film to go against type the way Burnt so inconveniently does. If Adam Jones had been a Ramsay-esque good guy all along, he would have stubbornly clung on to his creed and gone down with his ship whether his crew agreed with his methods or not. Because that’s what celebrity chefs do in their kitchens when the cameras are rolling. Young chefs-in-training are wantonly demeaned for entertainment, humiliated for growth, and nobody is permitted to complain because Chef’s word is law. The shows’ impetus for respect and discipline is admirable — certainly the hierarchy must be followed — but even military rule demands some level of temperance and restraint. And for a film that reportedly glorifies abuse, Burnt is patently Ramsay and White’s ideological antithesis. There are worse things than a glorified jackass, and an incorrigible chef is one of them.
Dylan Balde is a pansexual writer, YouTuber, and disability awareness advocate. She loves stealth games, manga fluff, Linklater, Evangelion, Walk The Moon, and Star Trek, and spends almost every night bawling her eyes out to Hollywood tearjerkers and wondering why we even bother. Is secretly plotting to adopt an ostrich, wild cattle, and a few dozen baby raccoons. Monica Geller in disguise. She maintains a podcast and a Twitch channel, and is currently studying screenwriting with New York Film Academy.
