{"id":14846,"date":"2026-08-11T18:34:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T22:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14846"},"modified":"2026-08-11T18:34:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T22:34:52","slug":"tony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/08\/11\/tony\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Tony<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A24\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 106 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language, drug use, sexual content\/nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Matt Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay McCarrol\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Bauman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 7, 2026 (US, limited)\/August 21, 2026 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Antonio Banderas, Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, Michael Jibrin, Monica Raymund, Dagmara Dominczyk, Rich Sommer, Caroline Portu, Ava Davey-Bissett.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tony<\/strong> is a salty and sweet coming-of-age biopic about the late Anthony Bourdain, a moody young man looking for direction in life. He finds it in the kitchen of a small seafood restaurant in Provincetown in the summer of 1975. It\u2019s when he fell in love with the art of cooking. Call it serendipity. If not for it, he might have been another failed writer who drinks too much.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) plays 19YO Tony (as he likes to be called), a college student who aspires to be a writer. After being denied a valuable fellowship, Tony impulsively travels to Provincetown to find Nancy (Jones, CODA), the girl he liked in high school. Things don\u2019t go exactly as planned and he finds himself stranded with no money to return home. He takes a job washing dishes in a local restaurant in exchange for a place to sleep. His boss, known only as Chef (Banderas, The Mask of Zorro), demands nothing short of excellence from his staff. He becomes Tony\u2019s mentor and friend. So what if he wakes him up each morning by dumping a bucket of water on his head?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Tony tries to pursue a relationship with Nancy. He lies to her about the fellowship. He tells her that he\u2019s writing a book. He even has her take photos of him for the back cover. She believes all of it. In addition, Tony becomes friends with the worst possible person, a co-worker named Sal (Woodall, Tuner), a drug addict and thief who brings out Tony\u2019s self-destructive side. It nearly costs him his chance at a relationship with Nancy after Sal starts a fight with the guy she\u2019s there with on a date.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t know too much about Bourdain. I never read his books or watched his shows. All I knew about him going into Tony<\/strong> was that he took his own life in 2018 after a bad break-up with actress Asia Argento. I\u2019m told that Tony<\/strong> isn\u2019t completely factual. It\u2019s largely fictionalized. He did spend a summer in Provincetown, he did wash dishes at a little seafood place and there was a Nancy. It differs in the details, mainly when it comes to Chef. He doesn\u2019t exist. There was no mentor. There\u2019s more, but this will suffice for the purpose of this review.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The film, directed by Matt Johnson (Operation Avalanche), is less interested in showing the life of a legend than it is showing a young person in the process of becoming a man with a clear purpose in life. To that end, it succeeds thanks in no small part to Sessa who does brilliantly as Tony. He plays him exactly as Bourdain himself described in his memoir Kitchen Confidential, \u201ca spoiled, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout in need of a good ass-kicking\u201d. He\u2019s not always likable yet you root for him to finally get it together.<\/p>\n

\u00a0British actress Jones does a decent job as the future Mrs. Bourdain. Unfortunately, the screenplay doesn\u2019t give her much to work with. As a character, she\u2019s underdeveloped to the point where one might think she doesn\u2019t play a bigger role in the subject\u2019s life. What attracted Tony to her in the first place? What makes her \u201cthe one\u201d? Banderas, on the other hand, is great as Chef, an enigmatic figure so guarded, nobody even knows his real name. He takes Tony under his wing and teaches him some of the tricks of the trade. It\u2019s likely the first real human connection Tony makes up to this point in his young life. Woodall might very well be the next big star out of Hollywood. He\u2019s got the looks and the talent. I look forward to seeing what he does next.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here\u2019s what I find especially interesting about Tony<\/strong> besides the approach taken by Johnson. It doesn\u2019t get too bogged down by heavier issues like Bourdain\u2019s mental health. There are a few hints scattered throughout, but Johnson takes the simpler route with the coming-of-age angle. I didn\u2019t even mind the predictable ending where Tony is forced to make a moral choice. Instead of showing us a doomed character, we get a young man finding his life\u2019s passion in the least likely place. His tragic end later in life lends a note of poignancy to it all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As of this writing, Tony<\/strong> is playing in limited release in New York and L.A. It opens wide on Aug. 21. It\u2019s worth checking out. It\u2019s a compelling and entertaining drama with some really yummy-looking food. It makes me want to go to a clambake.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Tony (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A24\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 106 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (pervasive language, drug use, sexual content\/nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Matt Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Todd Bartels and Lou Howe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay McCarrol\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Bauman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 7, 2026 (US, limited)\/August 21, 2026 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dominic Sessa, Emilia Jones, Antonio Banderas, Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Tony-POSTER-6.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14846"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14866,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14846\/revisions\/14866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}