Tony opens with a fitting quote from its titular subject, Anthony Bourdain, describing himself before he found his calling as a cook and decades before becoming one of the world’s most famous chefs: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” It’s a pretty perfect mission statement for Matt Johnson’s film, which is less interested in the finished Anthony Bourdain than the deeply uncertain young man who had to become him first.
Long before he discovered any real passion or skill in the kitchen, Tony is convinced he’s going to be a writer. So convinced, in fact, that he announces he’s won his school’s writing scholarship before the call even comes in. When that call arrives and reveals that he hasn’t actually won it, the fake-it-until-you-make-it routine can’t stop there. He runs away from his divided home life and heads to Provincetown with the few dollars he has left, chasing a girl named Nancy (played by Emilia Jones, and who Bourdain would eventually marry) and the opportunity to become someone other than the person he is at home.
That proves considerably harder than he expects. Tony can’t handle his liquor without becoming belligerent, has nowhere to stay, and quickly realizes that being on your own is considerably less glamorous than he imagined. Eventually, he finds work and a place to sleep at The Flagship, a local seafood restaurant where he becomes a busboy and convinces its head chef (Antonio Banderas) to let him crash on his porch hammock. Banderas is wonderful here, playing the kind of mentor who recognizes something in Tony before Tony is capable of recognizing it in himself, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him around come awards season.
Johnson wisely lets the first hour mostly live in its melancholic register. There’s a coming-of-age story underneath the surface, but Tony doesn’t rush toward the obvious moment where everything clicks. Instead, it sits with this miserable young man as he drinks, sulks, chases women, tries to fit in, and desperately attempts to convince everyone around him that he has his shit together. Dominic Sessa is fantastic at playing that contradiction. He’s lanky and hunched over, seemingly taking up as little space as possible while simultaneously talking himself into believing he’s destined for something greater. There’s so much self-loathing hiding underneath his bravado, and Sessa has the physicality to make you feel every bit of it.
The supporting cast of chefs is excellent, too. Leo Woodall was new to me here, but he’s great as one of the first people to take Tony under his wing, introducing him to both the rhythms of the kitchen and the much less productive nightlife surrounding it. The movie understands that Tony’s eventual transformation isn’t just about learning how to cook; it’s about finally finding a community where he belongs. His “good ass-kicking” comes from realizing that he can’t continue bending the world around him to accommodate his own insecurities.
It’s interesting that this is Johnson’s second directorial effort of 2026 after Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, because the two films could hardly be more different on a surface level. Yet the throughline is pretty clear: both feature male characters trying desperately to bend the world to their will through sheer force of personality, only to discover that the people around them aren’t nearly as convinced by the performance. Nirvanna turns that idea into something gleefully chaotic through its form, while Tony strips everything down to the inner turmoil of a person desperately trying to find a community and a version of himself that actually fits.
I walked out thinking Johnson might be the closest thing we have to a newer generation’s Richard Linklater. He works constantly and across wildly different modes, but there’s a clear eye for screen presence, casting, gravitas, and dialogue that actually sticks. BlackBerry, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, and Tony is an absurdly strong three-film run, especially considering how different each movie is from the last. His next project is a Magic: The Gathering adaptation, which is once again completely different and hopefully another opportunity for him to stretch himself.
A24 has also gotten pretty good at finding a specific angle into the traditional biopic rather than simply making a Wikipedia page with actors in it. Tony could almost be stripped of the Anthony Bourdain name and still work as a coming-of-age story about a deeply troubled young man finding purpose through cooking. That’s what makes it work so much better than a conventional cradle-to-grave biopic: Bourdain is the vessel, but the movie is really about the process of becoming someone. It’s a quality I’ve appreciated in things like The Iron Claw and The Smashing Machine, where the person at the center matters less than finding the specific emotional doorway into their life.
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And then there’s Sessa, who continues to prove just how absurdly talented he is. Alexander Payne deserves enormous credit for finding him for The Holdovers, because Sessa has an almost effortless ability to communicate inner turmoil without turning it into performance-y angst. He was exceptional there, and he’s even better equipped here to carry a movie almost entirely on his shoulders. I’m slightly worried that the success of The Bear and, hopefully, the critical and commercial success of Tony will lead to a wave of increasingly generic “scarred young man finds himself through cooking” movies. There are only so many Jeremy Allen Whites and Dominic Sessas to go around. But if Sessa keeps picking roles like this and The Holdovers, I’ll happily keep showing up.
Tony is ultimately a movie about a person who doesn’t know what he’s good at, doesn’t really know who he is, and has no idea how badly he needs the people around him. Johnson finds something deeply tender in that uncertainty without sanding down Bourdain’s more unpleasant qualities. It’s melancholic, funny, beautifully cast, and anchored by a terrific lead performance. More than anything, it’s another reminder that the best biopics aren’t necessarily about recreating a life; they’re about finding the one piece of that life worth making a movie about.
Score: 8/10
Tony (2026)
- Cast: Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, Michael Jibrin, Monica Raymund
- Director: Matt Johnson
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: August 21, 2026
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