Tony

Anthony Bourdain was a true original. He could be brutally honest, but also eloquent and worldly. He was genuinely curious about other cultures, learning about them through the conduit of their cuisine, and he folded that knowledge into his kitchens for decades, most famously at The Supper Club and Brasserie Les Halles in New York. His second career as a writer and travel show host began after he published his landmark 2000 book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, followed by shows such as the Travel Channel’s No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown. Though he exuded a no-nonsense confidence and bad-boy swagger, he was also self-deprecating, describing his youthful self as “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” That quote opens Tony, a biopic about Bourdain’s introduction to the culinary world during his 1975 summer break from college. It’s a sturdy if unexceptional movie that captures how, amid youthful uncertainty, Bourdain found himself. 

Matt Johnson directs, having just released Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie earlier this year. Tony feels like a dialed-down version of Johnson’s usual zippy style, lacking the element of docu-style fiction that has made his other work—The Dirties (2013), Operation Avalanche (2016), BlackBerry (2023)—so energized and unpredictable. By contrast, Johnson’s latest, distributed by A24, risks feeling like a director-for-hire gig. But it’s easy to see why Johnson would be attracted to the project; each of his films is about a fuck-up of a character who struggles to find his way through a creative process. The original script by Todd Bartels and Lou Howe appeared on the Black List of the best unproduced screenplays in 2024. Reworked by the Canadian director and his producing partner Matthew Miller, the film weaves aspects of Bourdain’s later life (food, drugs, atheism, storytelling, etc.) into the proceedings without feeling like a biographical checklist. Instead, Johnson invests his audience in the film’s immediacy and distinct characters, to the point that we almost forget we’re watching “the Anthony Bourdain story.” 

Dominic Sessa, who hasn’t done much worth seeing since his 2023 debut in The Holdovers, is superb in the lead role. His Bourdain is somewhat directionless but committed to landing a writing fellowship at Vassar College and becoming an author. Although his father (Rich Sommer) remains optimistic and supportive, his mother (Dagmara Domińczyk), an editor at The New York Times, is a critical realist, cutting down his pretentious use of five-dollar words that look better on the page than spoken aloud (bildungsroman, for instance). When he’s passed over for the fellowship, Tony, as he is known, keeps his failure a secret. He runs from his shame, resolving to pursue Nancy (Emilia Jones), a young woman with whom he attended high school and is infatuated for reasons that remain mostly superficial. She’s spending her summer in Provincetown, and he follows, hoping to arrange a meet-cute. But reality strikes, and Tony ends up with no cash in his Velcro wallet, sleeping in a hammock on the porch of a local restaurateur.

Played by Antonio Banderas, who is terrific, and known only as “Chef,” the character runs a spot called The Flagship that specializes in oysters and a few other modest dishes. Chef takes pity on Tony, who feigns kitchen experience, and allows the shaggy slacker to wash dishes for a place to sleep. Tony scrubs pans and plates all day, and at night, loses himself in drinking benders with the restaurant’s shucker, Sal (Leo Woodall), whose vices range from sleeping with college girls to bar fights to hardcore drugs. Tony maintains the lie that he’s a fellowship winner and working author, assuming that women his age will drop their pants at the news (they don’t). Soon, he takes an interest in the kitchen’s operations after quietly observing Chef and his crew, Stavros (Stavros Halkias) and Tyrone (Michael Jibrin). But his newfound fascination with the chaotic thrill of working in a kitchen remains secondary to his determination to appear as a writer and land Nancy in a deceptive courtship. 

Johnson captures the kitchen commotion well; although these nimbly edited (by Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch) sequences feel less frenetic and anxiety-inducing than those in FX’s The Bear, they are no less involving. Shot by Michael Bauman, who just won an Oscar for shooting Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025), Tony has a predictable ‘70s texture and color palette, somewhat muted and browned like an old photograph. The production design and costumes also never betray the period. The overall aesthetic reflects Tony’s live-wire state of confusion, always on the emotional brink and seldom acting with the intentionality of someone who knows what they want out of life. Surprisingly, Johnson isn’t as interested in the food as one might expect from a movie about Anthony Bourdain. The Flagship’s rather limited menu doesn’t allow for much foodie porn, which is at once disappointing and a smart choice on Johnson’s part. The film focuses on its subject: not food, or even Bourdain’s relationship with cooking, but how he emerged from his reckless teens and found the seeds of interest that would germinate later. 

Of course, the screen story takes liberties with Bourdain’s life and timeline. But the film’s dramatic framework, culminating with his application to the Culinary Institute of America, provides a thoughtful foundation for understanding what drove him. The writing has a few obvious biopic notes, such as bookending the film with two school interviews or ending with his adoption of the more adult-sounding “Anthony”—which is what his mother calls him, prompting him to grumpily correct anyone who calls him that. Given this detail, it’s curious that Johnson didn’t include a scene where Tony finds peace with his mother, who he both resents and, ultimately, learns is wiser and more correct about her criticisms of him than he’s willing to acknowledge. Regardless, Tony is a worthwhile watch, rounded out by a talented ensemble and fascinating subject matter that, given Bourdain’s tragic death in 2018, registers as bittersweet today.