Tony Review: Matt Johnson Finds the Right Ingredients In Anthony Bourdain Biopic

To the public, Anthony Bourdain was a carefully constructed persona: the fine-dining chef who waxed poetic about the joys of “regular” food and traveled to far-flung locales that made him want to throttle Henry Kissinger on shows like Parts Unknown. He would be the first to admit he wasn’t perfect, cataloging his faults in bestsellers like Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw while sharing his thoughts on various blogs and social platforms up until his tragic suicide in 2018. With such presence, it would seem like his life was plenty covered; Kitchen Confidential even had a Fox sitcom in 2005 starring a young Bradley Cooper. Matt Johnson’s _Tony _recognizes this tall order and, like many of the better biopics, chooses to focus on a small, pivotal section of Bourdain’s story: the first couple chapters of Kitchen Confidential.

When we first meet Dominic Sessa’s Tony, food is the furthest thing from his mind. He’s trying to pitch a novel to a Vassar writing fellowship, describing it as a sort of bildungsroman with flashes of Orwell. His attempts at hitting on Nancy (Emilia Jones), a girl he went to high school with, and subsequent rejection from said program showcase the Bourdain described on the poster: spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, thoughtless… and badly in need of a good ass-kicking. Sessa memorably broke out playing a similar sort of arrogant young man in The Holdovers, but as conceived by Johnson (along with co-writers Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels, and Lou Howe), Bourdain is unmoored and unformed, not quite sure of who he is or his purpose in life. Why else would he decide to chase Nancy to Provincetown on a whim?

That whim is what leads him to a hammock after getting in a fight at a local restaurant for being too touchy with a waitress. The restaurant belongs to “the Chef” (Antonio Banderas), who eventually hires Tony as a dishwasher for the summer. In these initial moments, Tony resembles more typical kitchen stories: chaos, insults, drugs. Where it differs is its focus on the actual labor that goes into running even a basic four-item menu, from the lax-at-the-time safety standards to the difficulty of operating a potato-slicer. One of the most compelling scenes has Tony helping Chef on a day off by refilling salt while the latter makes ketchup from scratch to fill bottles. It stands out, especially after a rapid-fire montage that slides through all the expected newbie foils and triumphs—the sort of light subversion one expects from the director of Blackberry and Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie. Jay McCarrol stays on doing the music, as does editor Curt Lobb, but Michael Bauman takes over cinematographer duties and exchanges the jittery handheld shots for some elegantly composed images (special notice for car lights illuminating a house with a party in full swing). Which is to say that while Johnson’s direction might’ve graduated in some respects, he still remembers his roots.

Tony as a film and Tony as a character are, by nature, half-formed. You could imagine this exact scenario playing out with any random early-20s misfit, but the interest comes primarily from our own knowledge of who this lout will eventually become. For the most part, Johnson avoids overtly tragic signposting or even obvious cameos, but it does mean that, outside of Tony himself and the Chef (a man so mysterious that not even the kitchen staff actually know his name), the rest of the cast remains shrouded in type. Stavros Halkias, for instance, plays the exact kind of character you’d expect based on his casting alone, while Woodall does a fine-enough job as a self-destructive townie. Jones fares the worst, resigned to playing the love interest who’s at least smart enough to recognize that Tony is bullshitting her for the vast majority of the movie. Yet she still can’t help falling into the cliché of an inevitable breakup and the feeling that she’ll cease to matter once Tony finally goes home. It’s the structural problem of not only being the beginning of the story, but of knowing that the audience knows this too.

The biggest compliment, in that sense, is that at no time does _Tony _feel like it’s stalling until Tony realizes cooking is his calling. Sessa has a great rapport with Banderas, who projects a stern warmth and reveals the many hidden layers of this mentor in continually surprising ways. It’s a role he’s aged into finely, as capable of getting a laugh from the simple act of pouring out a pot of water as his delivery of an incredulous, “You don’t believe in God?” Sessa proves he’s more than just a one-trick pony. Yes, his character is a bit of a brat, but he often plays the straight man, utilizing expressive eyes to project unease at the working conditions or absolute devastation at his mistakes.

Those looking for a movie about the man himself won’t necessarily come away with much about Bourdain or his background. As a film about how a small period of time can end up shaping a person, _Tony _is well observed and distinctive. If nothing else, it’s a welcome sign that Johnson can retain his signature voice while dropping some elements of his style and finding interest in a topic he might not care all that much about.

_Tony _opens in theaters on August 7.