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I think Anthony Bourdain is best known in the UK as the author of Kitchen Confidential but in the States he was also a huge TV personality with his cooking and travel shows. It is reductive, as some have, to call him the American Gordon Ramsey because while he displayed the same frankness and propensity for profanity he also mirrored Jamie Oliver with his campaigns around healthy food and was more than a bit Heston with the selection of some of his irregular ingredients. His close connection with his own biography also strongly reflected Nigel Slater. 

For me though, hearing the way he talked about food and the way it opened his eyes to a bigger world, how he said he was almost defined by the first time he ate raw oysters and how his imagination was sparked by his initial taste of vichyssoise soup, he sounds most like Remy from Ratatouille. Interesting as played by Dominic Sessa in this movie, lolloping around the stoves and the food prep station with his forlorn expression, he also looks looks a lot like Linguine from that same film. 

In truth though Bourdain was totally his own man and Matt Johnson’s Tony captures his individual complexity pretty well. Surprisingly this isn’t a really a foodie movie like Big Night or Chef, one moment with some Lobster Thermidor possibly withstanding, but this guy was about more than his recipes. The passion for both culinary and literary adventure are represented here, as is his interest in getting away from home, and the argument that the one summer depicted in the movie was what made him who he was is a pretty compelling one. It also shows him to be a huge romantic which also fits with a man who apparently took his own life because his girlfriend left him. Needless to say this part of his legend is not included. All in all, I feel that while this doesn’t always stick to the facts it does probably capture the truth of the man well. My advice is not to get distracted by what might or might not have actually happened in real life (some of it is a stretch) but enjoy the drama and the characterisation. It is a good story and that more than anything is what this guy tended to cook up. 

Heavily elaborating on the first three dozen pages of his famous biography, this film presents a young man, objectionable but charming, running away to Cape Cod, finding a lousy job and rough accommodation and finding some direction for his future. Sessa is compelling in the lead role, even with the Pixar associations, and makes this Tony believable in slightly unbelievable circumstances. Most of the people around him are caricatures but we still come to care for them when they are brought to life so well by the likes of Antonio Banderas, Leo Woodall and Emilia Jones.  

I wasn’t convinced that there a story here when I saw the trailer but they have definitely found one and the narrative has a good rhythm and remains pretty tight. Bit players are dispatched when the plot has no longer has use for them while some people only exist as extensions of others, and motifs are heavily repeated but its is impossible to deny that the plot doesn’t hold together and roll along nicely.