Growing pains are uncomfortable. So is “Tony” (2026), but in the best way. It brilliantly captures the travesty that is the arrogant young man and his coming-of-age story. The film opens and takes as its creed a quote from Anthony Bourdain – famous writer and chef – himself, where he calls his younger self miserable, selfish, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.
The film proves the quote true time and time again; young Tony, BS-ing his way through Vassar College, thinks only of himself. When faced with rejection – both in love and in school – he refuses reflection, and plows onwards anyway. The tenacity would be laudable, if he thought of anyone else along the way.
This isn’t a biopic of Anthony Bourdain’s life; it’s a snapshot of himself as a young man, spending the summer in a kitchen on Cape Cod. Born to be a writer, forced to be a dishwasher, Tony gets his first glimpse of kitchen life this summer. Dominic Sessa plays Tony perfectly, capturing the arrogance and the wavering, budding conscience of the young Bourdain. Antonio Banderas plays the chef and restaurant owner who gives Tony that much-needed ass-kicking. I’m more familiar with Banderas’s suave characters, so to see him play a gruff but lovable chef was a treat.
This bildungsroman tale isn’t without many obstacles, mostly created by Tony himself. His insistence on lying made me squish down in my theatre seat; it’s that uncomfortable. However, the film’s insistence that Tony wasn’t a good young man makes his journey that much more poignant. The devil almost constantly on Tony’s shoulder, a fellow cook played by Leo Woodall, is an excellent foil to Sessa. Woodall leads by bad example, and it’s easy to see the different paths set before Tony, one of growth and one of dissipation.
Mostly set in the kitchen, the film gives us an unflinchingly honest portrayal of kitchen life. Like the TV show “The Bear,” it shows a kitchen culture that is toxic, at times gross, unsanitary, and dangerous. Kitchen life is, apparently, vomiting into a trash bin at your station, wiping your mouth with your hand, snorting a line of cocaine, and then continuing to shuck and serve oysters to customers. It’s not a glamorous summer, by any means, but there’s no point in sugar-coating it, since the kitchen proves the crucible that made Anthony Bourdain the pop culture icon that he is.
The Anthony Bourdain I knew in popular culture showed respect for other people. He was unapologetically egalitarian, and he always had the utmost respect for those who caught, picked, prepared, and served food. It’s jarring to see a version of him in “Tony” that is none of those things, but gratifying to see the seeds of Bourdain’s character sown over the course of one summer.
The parts of this movie that shine are the scenes that show Tony what food means to people, the community aspect of catching fish, preparing food, and sharing something well-made with someone else. I am most definitely biased, since I also write a food column for the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, and I’m in favor of showing how important food is to community.
Before watching this film, I had started to see some discourse about whether or not Bourdain would have “approved” of this depiction of him on screen. I can’t speak to that, and we will never know. But, since Bourdain has been in popular culture a sort of hero to young men, the archetype of a “bad boy” explorer-journalist, I think it’s especially important that this demographic watches this film. The film’s strength is not in capturing the minutiae of Bourdain’s essence, but in showing, in small ways, what it takes to be a good man.
There is still time to see “Tony.” At the Peterborough Community Theatre, it’s playing on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at both 3 and 7 p.m. and Thursday, Sept. 10, at 7 p.m. Starting Friday, Sept. 11, it is playing at the Park Theatre in Jaffrey.