Review: 'Tony' delivers a portrait of a young man as an arrogant jerk, and Dominic Sessa and Antonio Banderas make it delicious

The celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain was the subject of a lot of mythologizing over his life, some of it self-imposed in his memoir “Kitchen Confidential” and other writings and CNN shows — so it’s no surprise that, eight years after his death, there’s a movie, “Tony,” that tries to do the same.

What makes “Tony” so powerful and downright entertaining is that it captures the chef at the very beginning of his journey, when he found the passion and developed the talent that could match his swagger.

The movie is set in the summer of 1975, when Bourdain was 19 and the idea of preparing great food wasn’t on his mind. Tony (played by Dominic Sessa) had designs on being a writer, and often told professors and girls he wanted to make out with that he was a writer — though he could produce scant evidence yet that he had actually written anything. (Notably, Tony’s last name is not uttered in the film until nearly the end.)

As a student at Vassar College, north of New York City, he applies for a prestigious fellowship and tells his parents it’s practically in the bag. So when he doesn’t get it, he lies and says he did, and then gets out of New York, claiming he’s on a research trip for his proposed novel. Really, he’s heading north to Provincetown, Rhode Island, a summer resort town, to chase after a young woman he fancies, Nancy Putkoski (played by Emilia Jones, in a somewhat fictionalized version of Bourdain’s first wife). 

Tony’s hopes of wooing Nancy hit reality on his first day in Provincetown, which ends with him getting drunk and tossed out of a seafood restaurant, and his cash stolen from his wallet. He wakes up in a hammock on the porch of the chef (Antonio Banderas) who runs the restaurant that ejected him. After a time, the chef (who is not identified until the very end of the movie) and the hotheaded Tony reach an understanding: He can keep sleeping on the hammock if Tony comes and works as a dishwasher at the restaurant.

Tony’s first day is tumultuous, as he burns his hand on a hot pan and is befriended by one of the sous chefs, Sal (Leo Woodall), who introduces Tony to the party-hard life of Provincetown’s summer tourists. Sal also introduces Tony to cocaine, which he takes to immediately, and heroin, which Bourdain wrote he didn’t start using until years later.

Slowly, though, Tony learns that his boss isn’t a typical seaside diner cook, but a classically trained chef with his own dog-eared copy of Auguste Escoffier’s legendary cookbook. Through his boss, Tony learns to appreciate great cooking and the camaraderie of a kitchen staff who can do it. 

Director Matt Johnson (“BlackBerry,” “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie”) and his three co-screenwriters work within the familiar confines of a “portrait of the artist as a young jerk” biopic. Moments of Tony’s arrogance run hard into moments of humiliation, and one of his big triumphs leads directly into a major disaster — which then leads into an even bigger and more redemptive triumph. 

As any chef knows, though, it’s not just the recipe, it’s the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the people preparing it that counts. The ensemble cast is strong, and brilliantly led by Sessa as the headstrong Tony and Banderas as the weathered chef who sparks his protege’s fire. And Johnson deftly captures Bourdain’s contradictory impulses — overconfidence and self-loathing — and shows how the tension between them made Bourdain, even at 19, the person we all recognize.

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‘Tony’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at several theaters. Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, and sexual content/nudity. Running time: 106 minutes.