Review 789: Tony

Matt Johnson's Tony is not a movie about cooking, it's about one mans journey to finding his calling 

Based on the memoir Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain; The film opens in 1975 where we meet "Tony" (Dominic Sessa from The Holdovers) as a student at Vassar college. After he's rejected for a writing fellowship, he impulsively travels to Provincetown, Massachusetts in the hopes of seeing his crush Nancy (Emilia Jones fresh off of Task and the remake of The Running Man). After a night of drinking at The Flashship, a local seafood restaurant, he gets mugged and 

He sleeps on his front porch and gets splashed with water as wake up calls as part of a running. 

His experience serving in the kitchen serves as an extended lesson in humility 

He also develops a friendship with fellow cook Sal (Leo Woodall) who's brash, confident but also highly volatile and into drugs. 

He's a college student who's forced to grow up 

One of the best things about Banderas unnamed Chef is that he doesn't take any nonsense from Tony, he 

His documentary like sensibilities shining through all the while complimented by DP Michael Bauman's (who shot Paul Thomas Anderson's Best Picture winning One Battle After Another) 

All set to a  score by Johnson's regular composer Jay McCarrol