Tony review

Tony is about Anthony Bourdain before there was really an Anthony Bourdain anyone would have cared about. It starts with him at 19 years old and follows him into the summer that first puts him into a restaurant kitchen. Young "Tony" starts out thinking he's going to be a writer, or at least he likes telling people he's going to be a writer.

He tells everybody he's gotten this writing fellowship in Provincetown. We know he's not actually the guy who got it. But the girl he's chasing is going to be there, and he's determined to go anyway, so off he goes.

He shows up unannounced in Provincetown and spies her kissing some other guy. Tony flips out, gets drunk, starts a fight at a restaurant, gets thrown out, gets his ass kicked, robbed, then somehow manages to go back, apologize and worm his way into a job washing dishes. And thus begins Anthony Bourdain.

What I like about this movie is that it does not pretend young Anthony Bourdain was secretly this wonderfully evolved, insightful guy just waiting for the rest of the world to notice him. Bourdain himself certainly did not describe that kid that way. He described his younger self as spoiled, narcissistic, self-destructive and badly in need of an ass-kicking.

That's basically the movie.

Tony is a narcissistic little teenage prick, and that is both what makes the movie interesting and what makes it irritating. He's an asshole. He lies to people. He builds relationships and then fucks people over. He goes after women and I frequently don't know why any of these women should want anything to do with him. He thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room when he very clearly doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

He thinks he can cook. He can't. He thinks he's socially sophisticated. He isn't. He thinks he has skills. He is basically useless.

That's where Antonio Banderas comes in, and Banderas is phenomenal here. His character gives this random obnoxious kid who has already gotten drunk and started a fight in his restaurant a chance anyway. He puts Tony to work. He tries to teach him skills. He tries to teach him responsibility. He tries to get him to understand that you actually have to do something before you can spend your life telling everybody how good you are at doing it.

Banderas is the warm beating heart of the movie. Every time he's on screen, I wanted good things for this man.

There is just this warmth Antonio Banderas can bring onto a screen when he wants to. He's got that quality, that star quality. He can play someone sinister and make you feel entirely differently about him, but when he's asked to bring warmth into a character, he can practically heat the theater. He's fantastic.

Then you've got Leo Woodall as Sal. Sal is older than Tony, but not that much older. He's the guy Tony looks at and thinks, "That's what a man is supposed to be," which is unfortunate because Sal is also kind of a prick.

He's just a much cooler prick.

He's good with women. He's confident. He says whatever the hell he wants. He does whatever the hell he wants. He pushes people around. He gets away with shit. Naturally, Tony thinks this guy is awesome.

So Tony has these two competing models of adulthood sitting around him. Banderas' character is trying to teach him discipline, responsibility and an actual craft. Sal is demonstrating that if you're sufficiently charming, you can apparently run around doing whatever the fuck you want. Guess which one the 19-year-old narcissist finds more interesting?

Leo Woodall is very good here. I've been impressed with him over the last year or so. He has this natural energy and charm that works on screen. We've seen another version of that recently, and I think at this point he's demonstrated that he can carry more than just supporting parts. He's got enough charisma to lead movies.

This year has obviously been dominated by people like Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Timothée Chalamet popping up everywhere, so Woodall isn't getting quite the same "this is his year" narrative. But he's had a hell of a year too. I think we're going to see a lot more of him.

Dominic Sessa also has a difficult job here because Tony is the protagonist but the movie does not make him particularly likable. You can understand him. That's different.

He's 19. Nineteen-year-olds are allowed to be idiots. There's plenty of room for somebody that age to fuck things up and become a completely different person later. And obviously, because we know who Anthony Bourdain eventually becomes, we know this useless little asshole eventually turns into a skilled chef, a great writer, an exceptional conversationalist and one of the more interesting cultural figures of his era.

We also know all of the edge never completely disappeared. Bourdain could still be abrasive as an adult. Some people still thought he was an asshole. So the question throughout Tony becomes how much progress this kid is actually going to make.

You keep waiting for it. You want somebody to knock some sense into him. A parent, a chef, some random guy on the street, anybody. There were multiple times during this movie when I just wanted somebody to punch Tony in the face.

Considering Bourdain's own assessment that he badly needed a good ass-kicking, maybe that means the movie has characterized him perfectly.

But it gets tiresome. There's only so much bandwidth I have for watching a rich white kid fuck everybody over and somehow keep getting another chance. That's not really an experience I identify with, so I could see somebody getting exhausted with him before the movie is over.

I did not. I was irritated by him, but I really enjoyed the movie. Maybe that's the best thing Tony does. It gives you Anthony Bourdain without turning Anthony Bourdain into a saint.

He's not the guy from Parts Unknown yet. He's not the great writer. He's not the beloved traveler who could sit down almost anywhere in the world and talk to somebody over a bowl of food. He's a 19-year-old prick washing dishes in Provincetown, and somebody has to start somewhere.

This is really good. Watch it.