Tony
Tony is a fine, sturdy biopic — albeit one hampered by the odd choice to make a movie about a fairly basic juncture in Anthony Bourdain’s life.
Not all that different from his Angus Tully in The Holdovers, Dominic Sessa experiences a similar journey of self-discovery over a formative summer in 1975 as his 19-year-old Tony navigates his first kitchen experience. And as with Mr. Tully, he has a gruff, reluctant mentor, this time in the form of an unnamed Chef (Antonio Banderas, easily his best work since Pain and Glory).
Apparently, entitled little shits need a crusty adult male role model to help them realize there’s more to life than, well, being an entitled little shit. And while there's some appeal in watching these pretentious goobers grow up, Tony lacks Angus’ depth of character and deep-seated pain, making his journey to semi-toleration far less rewarding.
Borderline irredeemable from his toxic opening scenes, Tony emptily lies to anyone who will listen about getting a writing fellowship at Vassar, then goes full stalker and follows his high school crush Nancy (Emilia Jones, CODA) to Provincetown, Mass., where he maintains this ruse while washing dishes at The Flagship seafood restaurant and decidedly not working on a book as he so claims.
Despite Bourdain's well-documented demons as a famous adult, viewers are clearly meant to look at this Tony and marvel at how he was able to get over himself and put in the work to become successful. While knowledge of that triumphant future makes this fairly one-note punk somewhat easier to stomach, it also adds greater significance to the already strong kitchen scenes at The Flagship, during which the rag-tag group of employees assemble dishes in no-fuss but occasionally rewarding fashion, frequently testing Chef’s patience to humorous ends.
These stretches additionally show that Tony isn't as bad or badass as he thinks. Wild townie Sal (Leo Woodall, Tuner) adopts the rookie as a quasi apprentice and serves as his wingman, frequently testing the limits of his welcome. Though Tony indeed matures over the summer and distances himself from Sal’s unsavory ways, it’s tough to buy the already mature Nancy being remotely interested in him, even factoring in good girls’ cliché weakness for rebels.
A victim of his own recent success, co-writer/director Matt Johnson understandably doesn’t quite deliver the absurdist delights of his other 2026 feature, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, but presents a more tonally consistent fact-based tale than the wildly uneven BlackBerry. Lacking the latter film’s highs, Tony is nevertheless well-made and features strong performances across the talented ensemble. And while it’s honest about Bourdain’s exposure to cocaine that fateful summer, it’s also a bit chickenshit in addressing his relationship with heroin, a drug with which he’d battle addiction for years.
Such inconsistencies are perhaps the result of there being two too many writers in the room (four are credited), yet they somehow manage to make the trite coming-of-age story work and sustain engagement in our gradually less annoying antihero’s budding maturity.
Grade: B-minus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and the Fine Arts Theatre.
(Photo: A24)
