Tony

Grade: B-

I wish there were more biopics made like Tony. What a breath of fresh air not to be walked through all of the usual beats, like: Here is the person at age 12. Here is the formative event. Here is the person meeting another famous person. Here is the scene that recreates the iconic photograph. Here is the speech that foreshadows the thing we already know is coming. Tony avoids that machinery, and I often forgot I was watching a biopic about people and events that really happened. Except for the “here’s what ended up happening to everyone” captions at the end, this could have been any regular movie about fictional characters.

The movie may have been so committed to avoiding the conventional biopic structure that it didn’t replace it with enough dramatic momentum of its own. It’s all setup and very little build to what ended up happening with its subject, the late chef Anthony Bourdain. Tony is directed by Matt Johnson, who did one of my favorite movies of 2023 (BlackBerry), and it features the stars of two of my favorite movies of the decade. We get to know 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain, played by Dominic Sessa, from The Holdovers. He is an aspiring writer who lies to his parents about receiving a writing fellowship in Provincetown, MA. Really, he went there to follow Nancy (Emilia Jones from CODA), an old high school crush.

The chef at the local fast-food seafood place lets Tony sleep on his hammock on the back porch. In exchange, he works at the restaurant, first as a dishwasher, and then tries his hand at food prep. This leads to sequence after sequence of Tony repeatedly being uncomfortable, inexperienced, out of place, and learning the ropes, and eventually the question becomes: Okay, what is all this building toward? If the answer is mostly “this is what he was like before he became Anthony Bourdain,” that can start feeling less like a dramatic arc and more like an extended character study that never quite finds the next gear.

I don’t know how much Sessa sounds like or resembles Bourdain, and it doesn’t matter. We know who we’re seeing. His performance here isn’t bad or wrong, and maybe it isn’t his fault, but it’s one-note. Even if it’s a good note, it’s a case of “Okay, well done playing sullen, serious, and intense. What else ya got?” He just doesn’t have enough layers, and I don’t remember thinking that about him in The Holdovers. Emilia Jones also isn’t given much dimensionality. She is there to forgive everything Tony does, and give him strike 4, 5, 6, and beyond. When they don’t have scenes together, he is the new guy in the kitchen. The fish out of water, constantly cutting himself, burning himself, and dropping things.

I liked enough about the film to give it a slight recommendation. There are effective supporting performances from the likes of Antonio Banderas as the chef, and Leo Woodall (Tuner) as one of the line cooks. The cinematography, score, and soundtrack do a lot of work to bring whatever texture and nuance the movie does have. I just wish it had more of a reason to keep me watching. As a biopic, I can’t praise the execution enough. Now give us a better “movie” movie to go with it.

Grade: B-