It’s almost too fitting that director Matt Johnson helms this biopic of the culinary marvel Anthony Bourdain. Johnson’s previous picture from this year, Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie, was all about losers with grand ambitions that work their way into your heart. His follow-up film, Tony, centers on Bourdain’s most formative experience that merged his love of writing with an unexpected passion for food, which also happened to be the time when he was a lying loser in need of an ass-whooping, as Bourdain himself described his younger years.

Dominic Sessa steps into the role of Bourdain with the brashness of 1970s youth he brought to The Holdovers (hopefully he’s not typecast for this era further). Anthony is so confident with so little to back up his bold actions. He interviews for a college writing fellowship with not much of a pitch and figures he has it in the bag. He sets his sights on dating his high school crush Nancy (Emilia Jones), but his eclectic vocabulary doesn’t impress much. Rather than admit defeat with his head constantly hung in bitter frustration, he lies his way into being something more, hoping all the bad karma won’t amount to him being a nobody.

A brash decision to take off to Provincetown finds Anthony out of cash and with no way to get home. He only finds shelter through working at a local restaurant, managed by the aged yet aggressive head Brazilian chef played by Antonio Banderas. His kitchen is a place where you learn the hard way, which happens to be the speed Anthony requires for some humility in his ambitions. Burnt and cut hands become a part of the learning process as Anthony soon befriends the dangerously confident Sal (Leo Woodall) and the filthy-mouthed Stavros (Stavros Halkias), becoming accustomed to the blur of hard-drinking of a coke-snorting amid learning how to best shuck an oyster.

Although Anthony insists he’s a writer throughout, he spends no time writing, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the characters. And yet, that is what makes the movie so strong in depicting the inspiration behind writing. So many of the ideas that go into forming the words happen away from the typewriter, and this film embraces that essential element of what makes a great writer. While still keeping up the lie of a writing fellowship he did not win, Anthony tells Nancy that he spends so much time writing in isolation amid a montage of his time spent in the kitchen. It might be an amusing scene for the juxtaposition, but we’re also watching how Bourdain discovered a new passion that fueled his writing. He is stumbling into becoming a writer the same way he stumbled into making lobster dishes in P-Town.

Johnson’s direction favors an earnest bluntness that never slows the movie down with nostalgia or sentimentality. Any moment that could come off mushy for this coming-of-age story is quickly grilled to be more believably brash. Banderas’s chef character might allow Anthony to sleep on his porch, but he’ll wake him up every morning with a bucket of water. This never stops, even when Anthony becomes more accomplished in the kitchen; he only learns to wake up earlier. That element of surprise and never being sure what is around the corner is what makes Bourdain’s summer adventure all the more thrilling for never going easy. At the height of Anthony’s good graces with the old chef, there are still some surprises, like drinking Malort and fishing with a gun.

The world has so much to discover, and Bourdain is given the chance to explore it on his own, where rejecting hard drugs and telling the truth won’t come with a stern lecture of reform. You either grow, or you don’t, and the dinner rush of reality doesn’t slow down for those who want a taste of something sweeter. This is also a bit of a hindrance for the movie, as it leans more toward a flash-fry than a simmer with its dramatic notes. The busy nature of such a story keeps this summer story alive and tight, but also speeds through its 1970s haze as a karmic rollercoaster of Anthony’s triumphs in the kitchen and lies that blow up in his face. The consequences punch so hard that the brutal admission of being a loser is more of a relief than a natural progression of his character. It all makes for a character you want to see struggle with the balance of small victories and violent defeats.

There’s enough sizzle to make Tony more of a punchier biopic that isn’t afraid to showcase a celebrity with more earnest grit than dramatic glaze. The passion for writing and cooking comes through in a way that doesn’t try too hard to evoke this inevitable fusion for Bourdain’s career. While this means the cooking is reduced to a game of endurance and the writing made non-existent, the refreshing honesty of humility has a freedom that resonates beyond Bourdain being in the right place at the right time. It’s far more inspiring to see someone so young and uncertain find a path in the dark hole they’ve dug for themselves, carving out the future rather than having a place already set for them at the dinner table. That’s worth far more than seeing a more complete picture of how Bourdain wrote his iconic book or landed his popular food travelogue show. Seeing him as a foul-mouthed, fibbing dishwasher is far more intriguing, and this film thankfully lets us spend a lot of time with that one weird summer where one brash student got the swift wake-up call he needed.

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