REVIEW: TONY
THE GIST
Tony is a film where it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why it is so good, because so many things stand out. It feels like a rare bit of filmmaking alchemy where everything just came together.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Going in, I was expecting some kind of chaotic, hellish kitchen movie. Gordon Ramsay-type mayhem. I’m not entirely sure why. I knew very little about Anthony Bourdain apart from the fact he was a famous celebrity chef, so perhaps I had tarred him with the same brush. The trailer looked good, the cast looked good and the early reviews were raving about it. But what I wasn’t expecting was just how completely Tony would draw me into its world.
That is where I think the film succeeds most. There are so many individual things it does well that they begin feeding into each other. The casting works. The performances work. The characters work. And once those characters drew me in, I was fully immersed.
At the centre of it is Dominic Sessa as a young and ridiculously confident Tony Bourdain. Tony is so certain of his abilities as a writer that he assumes he will get the scholarship he has applied for. When he doesn’t, his solution isn’t to admit defeat. It’s to tell everyone he got it anyway — his parents, his friends and Nancy, the girl he is chasing. Which is straight-up lying. And yet there is something about Tony’s sheer determination that made me willing to follow him anyway. A lot of that comes down to Sessa. He is one of those actors who just draws me in. When he is on screen, I am invested. He has that special sauce that is difficult to explain without simply pointing at his performance and saying: that.
Tony follows Nancy to Provincetown for the summer, only to discover her with another guy. One drunken encounter later and he finds himself beaten up outside a restaurant before Chef, played by Antonio Banderas, takes pity on him and lets him sleep in a hammock on his porch. And through what feels like a combination of coincidence, stubbornness and the providence the film keeps returning to, Tony ends up working in the restaurant. This was where the film really clicked for me.
The kitchen staff feel like working guys rather than characters positioned around Tony because the screenplay requires them to be there. Stavros Halkias and the rest of the crew have the energy of walking onto a building site and immediately realising everyone has been working together long enough to develop their own language, rules and bullshit. Leo Woodall as Sal was a particular standout amongst them. He plays the drug abusing, womanising work colleague, something I had not seen from Leo before which shows another side of this talented guys acting range. His character had the confidence Tony wanted. Banderas’ Chef fits perfectly into this strange little ecosystem too. His morals are wonderfully inconsistent. He apparently doesn’t care enough to notice people doing hard drugs in his kitchen, but take the Lord’s name in vain or turn up late and suddenly there are standards to uphold. There is a wonderful gag of him waking Tony up in his porch hammock every morning by throwing a pot of water over him. One of the many things in the film that brought playfulness and heart to their relationship.
It all helps make the restaurant feel like somewhere Tony stumbled into rather than somewhere the story carefully placed him. And that is important because Tony initially sees the job as a way to make some money while continuing his pursuit of Nancy. Gradually, though, the kitchen becomes something he genuinely enjoys. The film’s repeated references to providence work nicely alongside that journey. Tony thinks he knows exactly where his life is going, lies when that plan falls apart and then accidentally walks into something he never expected.
The one part I had considerably more trouble buying was the love story. Nancy clearly likes Tony when they first meet. She even tells him to come and find her later in the year. But by the time he does, his behaviour becomes increasingly difficult to overlook. He effectively follows her to Provincetown, continues telling lie after lie and even becomes involved in getting her boyfriend beaten up. At some point I started wondering: what exactly does Nancy still see in this guy? The film gives us enough of Tony’s determination and personality to understand why we might want to follow him, particularly with Sessa playing him, but I’m not sure it gives Nancy enough reason to remain interested. Tony also has plenty of opportunities to tell her the truth and repeatedly chooses not to. It never derailed the film for me, but it was one ingredient that didn’t mix quite as smoothly as everything around it.
And perhaps that is why Tony has been strangely difficult to review. Usually I can point towards one or two obvious things and say, “That’s why this movie works.” Here it was Sessa. Then Woodall. Then Banderas. Then the kitchen staff. Then the humour. Then Tony’s strange journey from failed would-be writer chasing a girl to someone beginning to discover an entirely different world.
Nothing was carrying the film on its own.
It all just came together.
Filmmaking alchemy.
Providence even.
