The first reviews for “Tony” are in, and they agree on exactly one thing without exception: Dominic Sessa has arrived. Matt Johnson’s biopic, which imagines a 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain adrift the summer before he found his calling in a restaurant kitchen, hits theaters August 7, and critics who caught early screenings this week are treating Sessa’s performance as the film’s clear centerpiece.
Variety went furthest, calling it Sessa’s first true movie-star turn and framing its review around a simple test: would the notoriously blunt, skeptical Bourdain himself have approved of a film about him? Variety’s verdict was that “Tony” clears that bar, built as it is around a real, if fictionalized, summer Bourdain spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1975.
The Hollywood Reporter’s review backed that read on Sessa specifically, calling him “excellent” in the role and praising how he handles the character’s contradictions — arrogance layered over real vulnerability — with genuine empathy and honesty. THR also flagged a nice touch buried in the film: Eric Ripert, Bourdain’s real-life friend and fellow chef, shows up in a small role as a member of the admissions panel that eventually accepts Tony into the Culinary Institute of America.
What the Movie’s Actually About
The story picks up with Tony as a Vassar College student who lies about winning a writing fellowship, then follows a classmate named Nancy (Emilia Jones) to Provincetown to try to win her over, per AV Club’s rundown of the plot. Things don’t go smoothly at first, but a chance encounter lands him in the kitchen of a local seafood restaurant, under a head chef played by Antonio Banderas, whom Screen Daily singled out as unexpectedly touching in his role as a kind of unlikely father figure. It’s there that Tony, more or less by accident, starts becoming the person he’ll eventually be known as — right before Johnson’s film cuts off, well ahead of the fame, the books, and the TV shows.
Not Every Critic Is Fully Sold
Not every outlet is convinced the movie surrounding that performance earns its keep. IndieWire liked Sessa’s work but argued the film is more interested in its own briny, bittersweet coming-of-age mode than in saying much about Bourdain specifically, going so far as to call his eventual identity as the famous chef “almost completely irrelevant” to what makes it work. The Baltimore Sun was cooler still, describing Sessa’s Tony as withdrawn to a fault, someone who “never unlocks” even in moments the real Bourdain wrote about with real joy. Looper landed somewhere in between, praising Sessa’s commitment to the role while admitting the film never quite explains who Bourdain actually became.
Most of the hesitation centers on the film’s limited narrative focus rather than Sessa’s performance, as it explores only a fraction of the character’s life. Bourdain himself once described his younger self in “Kitchen Confidential” as “spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless,” a line Screen Daily resurfaced in its review — and, by most accounts this week, more or less exactly the guy Sessa plays.
“Tony” also stars Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, Monica Raymund, and Rich Sommer, and opens in theaters nationwide August 7.
