Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Director: Morgan Neville
Year Released: 2021
Rating: 3.0

Documentarian Neville's attempt to provide some kind of closure for fans of the late Anthony Bourdain, who took his own life at the Le Chambard Hotel in 2018 - he goes back to Tony's childhood and early adulthood, through both of his marriages, his conflicted feelings about being a father and his struggle with personal issues which unfortunately led to his "final decision" (which he made sober).  I'm personally way past the age of hero worship, but I did look up to Bourdain as this kind of mad wanderer/philosopher who spent around 250 days a year travelling to places most of us will never get to (from the outside, it looked like a dream job) and I've personally seen everything he's ever done (it's amazing how he blossomed in front of the camera as time went on and he found his groove).  Neville's approach is tender (he got many of Tony's friends to participate, including acclaimed chef Éric Ripert, who was the one who found the body) if highly cautious: he's careful to remind the audience that his subject was an addict who kicked heroin only to "convert" that drive to a variety of other things, and how he made the fatal mistake of becoming addicted to another human being (Asia Argento), who was just as broken as he was (Morgan leaves out the part about Jimmy Bennett and does not interview Asia, which may or may not have been the right move).  I guess the ironic thing is that, if you think about it, the greatest documentary that could possibly be made about Bourdain was already made ... by Bourdain himself.  As his one colleague said, if you watch Parts Unknown or No Reservations or even scan his Instagram account, it really is "all there."