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Burnt: Mini-review

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Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper is a hotter dish than anything he prepares in Burnt

CBradley Cooper is such a perfect romantic leading man that moviemakers apparently feel that his presence alone is enough to make a successful film. As in this summer’s Aloha, the producers of Burnt simply put Cooper in an exotic setting and surround him with a solid supporting cast and hope for a good movie. The actual result, however, is like mixing together all the ingredients for a cake and then forgetting to turn on the oven.

In Burnt, Cooper plays Adam Jones, a former top chef whose temper and substance abuse problems ruined his career in Paris and sent him into hiding. Now sober, he sets his sights on London instead and prevails upon the owners of a posh hotel to let him take over its fine restaurant. Adam’s team includes a couple of his old associates, the restaurant’s current Maitre d’, Tony (Daniel Bruhl), and fellow chef Michel (Omar Sy). Among the newcomers he adds are extremely reluctant single mother Helene (Sienna Miller). Adam’s goal: to earn the highly coveted third Michelin star.

Gordon Ramsay was a technical consultant on Burnt and at times the movie seems like his personal fantasy. Director John Wells spends an inordinate amount of time indulging in food porn, showing montage after montage of all sorts of delectable edibles being purchased, prepared, cooked, and served. The camera also follows Adam as he visits all manner of restaurants (including a Burger King) so he can expound on his vision of cooking (“People eat because they’re hungry. I want to make food that makes people stop eating.”) When Adam actually gets around to cooking, however, he’s still the same arrogant, bullying jerk he was before. Even though the restaurant sequences are very well staged, director Wells spends so much time on the minutiae of haute cuisine and so little time on the actual character of Adam that the film’s rather predictable romantic and emotional developments feel rushed and perfunctory. Worse, the scenes in Burnt in which Adam acts the worst are actually the film’s best written. The audience could get 99% of the entertainment value of Burnt in half the time by watching a Food Channel “making of” documentary instead. As an actual drama, Burnt is definitely undercooked and underwhelming. 
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Unfinished Business: Mini-Review

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Vince Vaughn

Vince Vaughn is getting more pensive in middle age

B-Neither his fans nor the marketing executives who made the deceptive trailer for Unfinished Business may want to admit it, but Vince Vaughn is almost 45 years old. So, audiences expecting to see 90 minutes of R-rated debauchery and smarmy fast talk in the movie will be sorely disappointed. Certainly, there’s plenty of the former and a bit of the latter in Unfinished Business, but there’s also a good bit of heart.

Vaughn plays Dan Trunkman, a salesman who walks out on his job after suffering a pay cut and starts his own company to compete with his former boss Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller). He’s got two employees, Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkinson), who was let go for being past mandatory retirement age, and Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), who was just at the company for an interview. Now, Dan’s in a do-or-die situation, competing with Chuck for a contract he badly needs to keep the company going. With his two employees, he goes to Berlin to pitch his case to the client.

Unfinished Business is being marketed as a business class version of Eurotrip when it’s actually more like The Company Men with a lot of genitalia jokes thrown in. The raunchy humor is often funny but overdone and doesn’t always fit well with the more serious tone of a family man in trouble and trying to persevere for his family. Ironically, Dan’s company actually has the best bid on the contract he needs; his problem is figuring out how to get past  the corporate roadblocks in his way to prove it. Vaughn is effective as a father who’s ashamed to admit just how much trouble he’s in, and Franco turns what could be a joke of a character into the most likable in the movie. The filmmakers should have cut some of Unfinished Business‘s gratuitous drinking and partying scenes and played up the main characters a bit more, but, overall, the actors carry the movie. That is, if the audience is willing to accept the movie that’s been made instead of being disappointed they’re not seeing nonstop lowbrow humor.
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American Sniper: Mini-Review

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Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is still in top form.

A-On one level, Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper is an excellent action film, with set pieces that are far superior to those in recent junk like Taken 3 and Blackhat. More than that, however, it’s a surprisingly thoughtful and powerful drama that’s easily one of the best movies of the year.

Oscar-nominated Bradley Cooper stars in American Sniper as Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL whose marksmanship skills make him the most celebrated sniper in Iraq. Kyle protects the U.S. troops in the field by keeping a constant eye out for hostile Iraqis. Anyone he sees, including women and children could easily throw a grenade or set off a suicide bomb unless Kyle stops them first. Although he gets through the war physically unscathed, the growing mental pressures he faces take their toll, on Kyle and his wife (Sienna Miller) and family.

The war in Iraq, in which U.S. troops were frequently targeted by civilians in urban areas that provided lots of cover, was unlike anything else in our history, and Eastwood perfectly captures the uncertainty and danger our troops faced, in scenes that are often incredibly suspenseful. Although American Sniper takes some liberties with Chris Kyle’s life story, viewers see what made him effective and admired by his fellow soldiers. Thanks to Bradley Cooper’s remarkably subtle performance, we also see how he was affected by the strain. Kyle doesn’t snap or go nuts; he’s just not there, especially for his family, a good bit of the time. Clint Eastwood, at age 84, knows about combat, having fought in Korea. In American Sniper, he and Bradley Cooper bring combat, and its aftermath home to a new generation of filmgoers. 
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