The slice-of-a-life biopic, as I like to call it, has become such a thing now and to be honest it is a nice break from the sweeping epics and predictable rise and fall stories. Bourdain created a movement and redefined how we spoke about food, how we traveled and most importantly how we engaged with one another. His whole practice was about listening: sitting down with strangers, eating what they cooked, and letting the encounter move him and his journey. That was the real subject of his life and work.
I think Matt Johnson's film Tony starring Dominic Sessa as Anthony Bourdain had the opportunity to see ourselves in Bourdain's early years and how we, too,
Dominic Sessa as the titular character in Tony (2026)
through food, travel, love and most importantly listening can change the course of our lives. At best, the film captures his style of communication and storytelling but what was lacking for me was the listening. The paying attention to his world.
It opens with a quote from Kitchen Confidential about the need for his younger self to get an ass-kicking then immediately goes into a story pitch that showcases his early onset (yet endearing) smart-assed-ness. It's a great set-up, but the pay-off isn't there.
I think all of us saw Bourdain as a sort of living metaphor for a punk-rock, rule-breaking way of life but there are three core principles that I think he followed religiously and it is these three principles that I feel should've served as the thematic and philosophical heart of Tony.
He believed in radical listening, that understanding another person or culture required you to shut the fuck up. This alone ties directly to the required ass-kicking his younger self needed: Shut the fuck up and listen. Anthony spends so much time talking I actually enjoyed seeing him take a fist pie to the face. Thing is, he doesn't shut the fuck up. There isn't truly a moment when the character hears the ensemble tell him something from the heart outside of Banderas's nameless Chef character. I'll come back to supporting characters further down, but essentially, but essentially, they don't offer much story to listen to in the first place.
Bourdain was strict on the Grandma Rule, which he explains in his book Medium Raw: If you are in someone else's house and they offer you a meal, you don't critique it, you show gratitude. In a moment in time when cultural exchange has been weaponized and the shitty need to criticize other cultures, the Grandma Rule is an ethical framework that the film had a chance to make visible.
Not once do we see this theme hammered home completely. There is a moment when Anthony is finally allowed to sit with the kitchen crew and he finds the squid stew revolting. The crew laugh and it is obvious that we're meant to see his progression into the acceptance of the community and set us up for his betrayal of it. We all know he's going to love these people, and the stew, one day. Unfortunately, it only mildly suggests that the experience has had any sort of profound philosophical impact on young Anthony because the character doesn't incorporate it into his personal journey.
Community is where I see the film's biggest swing and miss. Sometimes, we all make the mistake of seeing the obvious win, taking it for granted and completely whiffing on it. A shared humanity is literally Bourdain's not-so-secret weapon. It's like Mike Tyson's left hook. Kobe's Mamba Mentality. Basquiat's creative vision to bring Black history, anatomy, mythology and street culture together.
Yes, the trappings are there: Acceptance into a niche community within the small setting of Providence in the 1970s, having an adoptive big brother with substance and rage issues, being taken in by a stern but loving father figure. It falls short because these characters are so underbaked, their arcs trope-ish and the calibre of acting underutilized.
(L-R) Antonio Banderas as Chef, Dominic Sessa as Tony Bourdain and Leo Woodall as Sal in Matt Johnsons biopic Tony (2026)
I get it, this is a story about young Bourdain, but the Bourdain story is getting to know him through his interactions with other people. There are literal episodes of Parts Unknown where you see a subject's personal story change something inside Bourdain, captured in his eyes by the camera. His view of the world was constantly shifting because of the people he interacted with, not the food he was making or eating.
Banderas and Leo Woodall did well with what they were given but their characters never evolve. Emilia Jones is super talented and it pains me to see her play a character written so typically. I didn't find much about her that is interesting at all. Stavros is funny but also a trope.
I don't even want to get into the character of Tyrone played by Michael Jibrin because it's so fucking exhausting to see another black character as the tough black man who shows his strength and resilience by withstanding the pain of a piping-hot cast-iron skillet and all the other feats of physical prowess he possesses. How very 70s indeed.
We get the most backstory out of Chef: His hopes, dreams, an arc. We get a taste of his philosophy but through the story of François Vatel, the 17th -century chef who killed himself because the fish for Louis XIV was late (it arrived after he stabbed himself). I believe in industry parlance this is called putting a hat on a hat. We don't see it embodied in Chef, though. What we do see is that Chef is religious about punctuality and Sunday mass.
Sometimes, you just want a clumpy tuna casserole because it is comforting at exactly the right time. Bourdain believed that sometimes, after a long day of fine dining, the simple meal rounds out the day. I feel the same about Johnson's Tony.
Sometimes, you just want a clumpy tuna casserole because it is comforting at exactly the right time. Bourdain believed that after a long day of fine dining, the simple meal is what rounds out the day. I feel the same about Johnson's Tony. It's satisfying in the way comfort food is satisfying, and there's a place for that. But Bourdain was more than that. He was the guy who taught us that traveling across the world for that simple meal, enjoying it in someone else's kitchen, hearing what their day was like, is the point of it all. The film gave us the casserole when I think we deserved the squid stew.
Anthony Bourdain as himself in The Big Short (2015)