COMIC DRAMA; 1hr 41min
STARRING: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
MasterClass: Cooper and Miller
After three years in the oyster-shucking wilderness, atoning for wasted behaviour that wiped the floor of a top-tier Parisian restaurant, two-star Michelin chef Adam Jones (Cooper) lands in London. His grand plan: a third star, sweated out in the kitchen of a snippy restaurateur (Daniel Brühl) with whom Adam shares the same unfortunate history he has with everyone.
Chef Jones is undeterred. “My kitchen is going to be the best in the world,” he says. Brusque, arrogant, walled-off and obsessed, he cooks like a tantrum-throwing maniac in the lowest circle of hell. His kitchen brigade (Miller, Omar Cy et al) are punching bags and their opening night is a meltdown. But the food — oh my five stars! It’s poetry on a plate, and Cooper, for whom dedication to a taxing role is no small matter, gets it there with the blood and thunder of a deranged bull and the delicate flair of a master jeweller. This is food as art, food as high drama and, as the title of director John Wells’s moody, involving spectacle suggests, food as a potential road home from a wrecked and squandered past.
