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Rating: 4.0/5.0
CHICAGO – TONY is one of the better examples of the recent trend towards the mini-biopic. By focusing on a very specific period in the life of the celebrated chef and later writer Anthony Bourdain, it becomes a moving and compelling coming-of-age drama that consistently rings true.
The film takes its inspiration from the early chapters of Bourdain’s best-selling book KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL. When we first meet the teenage Tony, as played by Dominic Sessa, he’s coasting on chutzpah and his capacity for B.S. to try to talk his way into a writing fellowship. He’s a smug, ironic smart ass who is firmly convinced he knows better than any of the old fuddy duddies at his university.
TONY
Photo credit: A24
At a bar afterwards he congratulates himself on his ability to seemingly pull one over on those college morons. It’s there he sees an old high school classmate named Nancy (Emilia Jones) who as his friend says, is not the approachable type. So naturally, high on his own supply of ego, Tony waltzes right in, stares down her skeptical friends, and strikes up a conversation. He sort of strikes out, but finds out she’s spending the summer in the seaside town of Provincetown in Massachusetts.
When the fellowship falls through, Tony ends up wandering there too, spinning a web of half truths and outright falsehoods to catch up to her … but this is no love story, it’s a story of a young man trying to find himself. It was there that Tony found his tribe among the stations of cooks, dishwashers, and waitresses, who are slinging oysters and french fries. They weave a tapestry of profanity in the kitchen while dealing with the everyday hazards of a working kitchen – from cuts and scrapes to malfunctioning equipment and the occasional fire.
Actor Dominic Sessa, proving THE LEFTOVERS was no fluke, shines as the teenage Bourdain. He doesn’t do an impression of the character, he just seems to embody the late chef’s early spirit with his James-Dean-wannabe demeanor and general air of not giving a flying flip about anything except scoring with chicks and getting drunk, and later getting high. There’s virtually no voice-over in the film, as it prefers to show rather than tell what’s going on. It moves at a relatively swift clip which means the film glosses over some of the more salacious stories from Bourdain’s book, alluding to them, or giving them only a few seconds of screen time.
Antonio Banderas & Dominic Sesso in TONY
Photo credit: A24
Antonio Banderas portrays the head chef and owner of The Flagship, the oyster slinging joint where Tony later works at in the kitchen, after getting thrown out the first time he’s in there. The owner/chef lets him sleep at his home on a hammock outside, waking him up with a bucket of cold water while at the same time giving him a baptism by fire, working in the kitchen among the oyster shuckers
While the young Tony had cultivated an air of ironic detachment, it is his chef mentor that shows him something he can actually believe in … the power of food. It is the relationship between the cook master and the aimless kitchen newbie that gives the film its narrative fuel.
The story ends just as Tony begins to embark on his own career to study cooking, on his way becoming a professional chef, and later a media star. But as Anthony Bourdain says in his book, that summer in the trenches gave him a purpose in life.
It’s a little movie that holds large pleasures for the audiences who find it.
TONY has a rolling release on August 7th, 14th and 21st. See local listings. Featuring Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, Rich Sommer and Leo Woodall. Written by Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe. Directed by Matt Johnson. Rated “R”
© 2026 Spike Walters, HollywoodChicago.com
