When Matt Johnson’s Tony introduces Dominic Sessa as its 19-year-old protagonist, he doesn’t introduce himself as Anthony. Most people don’t even bother using his nickname, instead calling him some variety of jerk or asshole. Most people are right about him. Bursting with black-leather-jacket-with-the-price-tag-still-on arrogance, Tony wants to be a writer, making big plans for a writing fellowship he assumes he’s going to get from Vassar. When the fellowship goes to someone else, he packs up his stuff and follows a girl (Emilia Jones) to Cape Cod — the sort of decision you make when you’re young, dumb, and full of… Great ideas.
It’s a straightforward kickoff to a story about a life-changing summer — a bildungsroman like the one Tony confidently pitched in his fellowship interview. The twist is that this is no ordinary summer for Tony, who is destined to grow up to become Anthony Bourdain, the industry-changing chef whose legacy hovers over the culinary world to this day.
Biopics and the challenge of portraying real-life people
Because biopics have grown to have a negative connotation (“Dewey Cox has to think about his entire life before he plays” casts a very long shadow), many recent projects based on real-life people try to avoid being stuck with the label, or more accurately the responsibility of representing a significant person’s entire life. Universal promoted Oppenheimer as an “epic thriller,” while other movies spotlight a very specific period of time in their subject’s life, such as the Natalie Portman-starring Jackie.
Tony takes the latter approach with the additional layer of downplaying its connection to real life, instead aiming for a sunny nostalgic energy similar to movies like Adventureland and The Way Way Back. No real knowledge of who Bourdain was as a person is required to enjoy the story as it unfolds. Especially since this isn’t yet the Bourdain who will write multiple best-sellers, and encourage TV viewers to try new things and explore the world.
Instead, as mentioned, he’s kind of a dick. It feels mean to say that Sessa is really good at being an asshole, but that’s the assignment and he aces it, even as he scrapes away the occasional inch of bullshit to reveal the more evolved man Tony is destined to become down the line. The movie’s poster literally hard-sells this ideal via a quote from Bourdain: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”
Tony’s journey in the film
When Tony lands in Cape Cod, he immediately makes some stupid decisions that get him tossed out of the bar/restaurant run by “Chef” (Antonio Banderas) and relieved of all his cash. Desperate for money, he starts working in “Chef”‘s kitchen as a dishwasher and sleeping on his porch, all while spinning lies about his prestigious fellowship to anyone who will listen. This includes that dream girl, who works at a local pizza place and has a boyfriend — and is thankfully unimpressed by much of Tony’s blather.
The story is complete fiction, at least in comparison to the chapters of Kitchen Confidential Bourdain spent describing this period of his life prior to culinary school. But there’s still a lot of the book in the mix here, as Tony leans hard on the way Bourdain described life as a chef, establishing the pirate crew of cooks as certified badasses. Their king is probably the tough, and incredibly charismatic Sal (Leo Woodall), who Tony immediately falls under the sway of.
The film’s cast and direction
Beyond Sessa, it’s a solid cast with Antonio Banderas’s quiet, nuanced work at its center — one of the movie’s most arresting sequences is so simple in execution: On a day off, “Chef” brings Tony into the kitchen to help him make ketchup from scratch. Why make ketchup from scratch, when it’s easy to buy in a store? The script by Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels, and Lou Howe doesn’t broadcast the answer, instead letting it shine in the pride in Banderas’s face, at a job well done.
As a director, Johnson’s style is hard to pin down, but not necessarily in a bad way: Rather than lean hard into auteur tendencies, he meshes his voice with the story being told. The result is that his movies couldn’t be more different: Just recently, there was the bleak tech biopic Blackberry, in sharp contrast to the “brazen originality” and “joyful playfulness” (to quote Consequence‘s own Jonah Krueger) of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. Tony, meanwhile, is lazy summer vibes, the possibilities of the future all stretched out before this young man. If he can get over his shit and grow up a little.
Tony doesn’t give Tony too much growth by the end, but it does highlight some core values that Bourdain would express in his work as an adult: The pleasure of creation, the beauty of consumption, and the power of the unassuming and unexpected. None of us live perfect lives, Bourdain being no exception. But he did teach us to savor the imperfections.
Tony gets served up into theaters on Friday, August 7th. Check out the trailer below.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
