Tony (2026) Review: The Anthony Bourdain Biopic That Actually Feels Like a Movie

Tony is a funny, messy, surprisingly tender look at Anthony Bourdain before he became Anthony Bourdain.

Tony is a biopic that doesn’t really feel like a biopic.

Good Points

• Dominic Sessa gives an excellent performance as Tony.

• Antonio Banderas is also fantastic.

• The kitchen scenes.

• The 1970s setting.

• Matt Johnson avoids the usual rushed, Wikipedia-style biopic formula.

Bad Points

• Tony and Nancy’s romantic relationship never feels particularly convincing.

My Thoughts on Tony

Tony is a damn good biopic

Matt Johnson has made a very good movie here, and thankfully he also doesn’t seem particularly interested in making the usual famous-person biopic we are used to, which already puts Tony ahead of a lot of films in this increasingly crowded genre, as there is no sense here that Johnson needs to race through Anthony Bourdain’s life and make sure we get all the famous bits like some I could mention.

It’s more of a film about a young guy who is still trying to work out what the hell he’s doing, and I think the film is at its very best when you forget that the character eventually becomes one of the most recognizable food writers and television personalities in the world, because it then just feels like a movie about a person, rather than feeling more like a Wikipedia page with actors just standing around recreating famous events.

Dominic Sessa is really good as Tony

Dominic Sessa is excellent here - Tony is not an especially nice person, as he’s selfish, immature, dishonest and often incredibly frustrating, and he has a talent for making whatever situation he’s in considerably worse, usually while convincing himself that he’s the smartest person in the room.

But he’s also not irritating just because the screenplay has decided he needs to be an edgy, rebellious teenager, he’s irritating because he behaves like an actual 19-year-old who thinks he knows more than he does, and there is also something midly funny about watching him confidently make one terrible decision after another.

Sessa showed in The Holdovers that he could carry a film, and Tony gives him another complicated young character without simply repeating that performance,where he’s less sympathetic here, but I actually think that makes the performance more interesting.

Antonio Banderas is also fantastic though, and I liked his performance more and more as the film went along, where Chef clearly sees something in Tony that Tony doesn’t see in himself, and Banderas makes that relationship believable without turning it into one of those sentimental movie friendships where everyone suddenly starts explaining their feelings to each other.

It becomes almost a father-and-son relationship, and I bought it completely, and Banderas also gives the film a sense of calm whenever Tony starts behaving like an idiot, which is fairly often.

The kitchen scenes are a lot of fun

The restaurant scenes are where Tony really starts having fun, where the film also seems to fully understand that restaurant kitchens can be unpleasant places without turning everything into misery, as there are funny moments, stupid moments and genuinely warm moments between the people working there, with Leo Woodall also putting in a decent performance as Sal.

Sal is the sort of person you know Tony should probably stay away from, which naturally means Tony spends plenty of time around him, and Woodall gives him a loose, reckless energy that makes him entertaining even when he’s doing things that would make a responsible adult quietly walk in the opposite direction.

And then there’s Stavros Halkias, playing Stavros, and it’s basically impossible not to enjoy him, as he gets some of the film’s funniest moments, and his presence gives the kitchen a little extra personality.

The cast as a whole all put in a good shift here to be fair.

The movie feels like s summer

The 1975 setting gives the film this warm summer feeling, and Provincetown gives it a relaxed sense of place, with enough detail to make the period feel pretty convincing, but I never felt like the movie was desperately trying to prove that it takes place in the 1970s either.

There is a real warmth to the images that suits the story, particularly when the film moves away from the restaurant, where you can feel almost comfortable one minute and then a bit unpleasant the next, which fits the character pretty well.

It’s also worth remembering that the movie was shot remarkably quickly, with production reportedly taking less than a month, but you wouldn’t know it from watching the finished film.

I did struggle a bit with was the relationship between Tony and Nancy within the film though, as while Emilia Jones is good, and Nancy is likable enough, the actual relationship didn’t really work.

Tony spends so much time lying to her and trying to manipulate situations that you keep wondering what exactly she saw in him, and I understand that this is part of showing what a mess he was when he was young, but it makes the romantic side of the story difficult to care about, but the film is much stronger when it concentrates on Tony and the people in the kitchen.

That relationship with Chef feels like it changes him, while his relationship with Nancy mostly feels like something he’s desperately trying to make happen because he’s decided it should happen.

Matt Johnson keeps it personal

This is a very different film from BlackBerry and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, but Johnson’s personality still comes through, and you will notice that he seems much more interested in people than in making a big statement about Anthony Bourdain.

The screenplay, written by Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe, is also based loosely on material from Kitchen Confidential, but the film doesn’t feel like it’s simply acting out pages from the book either, because Johnson also reportedly compressed roughly a decade of Bourdain’s younger life into the period covered by the movie.

Bourdain actually spent around three years working at the real restaurant that inspired this part of the story, so Tony is very much a concentrated version of that period rather than a literal recreation of every event, and I think that maybe explains why the movie feels more like a memory than a historical record.

Jay McCarroll’s score is another thing I also liked, as it fits the summer setting really well, and helps give the film its personality without turning every emotional moment into an enormous announcement that we’re supposed to feel something, and the needle drops are good too.

In the end, Tony ends up being something much more interesting than a standard rise-to-fame story, which is to its credit, as it’s more about finding the first thing that makes you want to get your life together, and how someone can start moving in a better direction.

Final Verdict

Brilliant cast performances, and I liked that it didn’t just become a Anthony Bourdain tribute movie - it’s the movie about the kid who eventually became him, and ends up being one of the better biopics I’ve seen.

Film Credits

Directed by Matt Johnson

Written by Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe

Based on Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Produced by Tim White,Trevor White, Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller

Starring - Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Dagmara Domińczyk, Rich Sommer, Stavros Halkias, Leo Woodall, Antonio Banderas

Cinematography by Michael Bauman

Edited by Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch

Music by Jay McCarrol

Running time - 106 minutes

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