X
- 2021
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 59 m
- 2021
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 59 m
Summary It’s not where you go. It’s what you leave behind . . . Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon.
Directed By: Morgan Neville
- 2021
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 59 m
- 2021
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 59 m
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
78
6.2
Summary It’s not where you go. It’s what you leave behind . . . Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon.
Directed By: Morgan Neville
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 39 Critic Reviews
78
92% Positive
36 Reviews
36 Reviews
8% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 39 Critic Reviews
78
92% Positive
36 Reviews
36 Reviews
8% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Neville’s portrayal is gripping, emotional and therapeutic, but fans looking for clear-cut answers won’t find them.
A film of fitting energy and complexity, it’s a stirring account of an astonishing life.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 21 User Ratings
6.2
71% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
14% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
14% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 21 User Ratings
6.2
71% Positive
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
14% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
14% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
"ROADRUNNER: A Film About Anthony Bourdain," directed by Oscar-winner Morgan Neville ("20 Feet from ****"), shines a light on the fast life and tragic death by suicide in 2018 of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. The documentary accomplishes this using archival footage from Bourdain's hit television shows, "No Reservations," "Parts Unknown," "The Layover," "A Cook's Tour," along with interviews with him beginning in 1999 as he began writing his best selling book, "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly." The film also includes interviews with various Bourdain family, friends and work colleagues. The grief of his loss is still very raw, evidence of this shown through the interviews in the documentary, leaving the audience with many theories and unanswered questions as to why Anthony Bourdain chose to commit suicide. Much like Bourdain was in life, the film never stops moving, taking you along for the accelerated journey of a man who was inventive, tempestuous, extraordinary, and deeply flawed.
Report
I think the most important thing about this documentary is that taking into perspective the life that Anthony Bourdain led - one that many might say they envied or coveted - it becomes evident that even amid the appearance of success, the inner emotional and mental struggles of an individual remain concealed. Consequently, any queries surrounding the rationale behind his decision to end his own life become inconsequential.
The tribute legitimately focuses on the achievements of one's own life and, in this sense, the documentary effectively achieves its purpose.
Report
Morgan Neville’s nervy, impressionistic film, which over the course of two hours quietly peels back the layers of an onion that sweetened almost everything it touched and left many of us with tears in our eyes.
Neville lingers long enough, painting a picture of a lost soul who brought so much of himself to the world while also wondering about his place in it.
If you miss Anthony Bourdain — and for many, the celebrity chef’s death in 2018 felt like the loss of a close and troubled friend — Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is a salve.
Roadrunner is never less than fascinating to watch, but it is far from perfect.
The documentary is a mere encyclopedia-like info-product, which reduces its rich audiovisual archival material and its heartfelt interviews with people who knew and loved Bourdain to freeze-dried sound and image bites. It hardly deserves the attention it’s received—and Neville’s audio stunt, far from marring the film, merely serves as a brazen form of self-promotional publicity.
I loved that doc, and I hated it at the same time. I think it can be said the same thing about Anthony Bourdain. Love how the story unfolds and that you see/ear the guy talents. Hate the fact that he run from his problems and that the film is about suicide too. This isn't a joyful happy movie. I don't recommend you see that movie if you suffer from depression. But if you want to understand how peoples flee their problems and hide them into work, it is a great example of that. I think that Bourdain might have suffered from bipolar or manic depression, but he certainly wasn't relating normally to the world around him. I give the movie 75%. Maybe more because I liked how his friends have presented him, in a very honest way. Something he would have liked.
Report
After watching this portrait of enigmatic chef/writer/storyteller Anthony Bourdain, I came away sincerely convinced that I had watched a biography about a troubled, multifaceted talent, but I didn't feel as though I knew the protagonist any better than I did going in. That's particularly true when it comes to understanding what led to his seemingly impulsive, inexplicable suicide in 2018, a question that basically remains unanswered. To a great degree, these shortcomings are probably attributable to director Morgan Neville's ambitious, though nevertheless insufficient, ability to get a grasp on the picture's expansive subject matter and mold it into a coherent finished form, an aim that's perhaps fundamentally impossible to attain given the diverse nature of Bourdain's life, character and work. Consequently, viewers are essentially left with a somewhat overlong, encyclopedic dissertation of the protagonist's accomplishments and life events, one that's depicted through footage of an array of colorful incidents drawn from a wealth of archive material, punctuated by insightful interviews with those who knew and worked with him. But, while that may make for some visually intriguing eye candy with modest smatterings of heartfelt moments, it fails to coalesce into the kind of cogently organized narrative characteristic of some of the filmmaker's other works, such as "20 Feet from ****" (2013) and "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (2018). Bourdain was an innately complex individual, but, simply because of that, it may not be realistic to believe that the essence of someone with such a complicated persona can be sufficiently captured and depicted on screen. And any efforts that come up short of that, regrettably, just don't do the principal justice.
Report
Production Company
CNN Films,
HBO Max,
Tremolo Productions
Release Date Jul 16, 2021
Duration 1 h 59 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline The Journey Changes You
Awards
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US
• 1 Win & 3 Nominations
Film Club's The Lost Weekend
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
National Board of Review, USA
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
