Tony Odyssey

When we first meet Tony (co-writer Kelson Succi), he’s cleaning a toilet, subservient and meek. When we meet Ivy (Iraci Estrela), she’s hitching a ride through a stunning desert landscape, full of dramatic rock formations and perilous precipices. Arriving at the bar where Tony works, she pauses to lean over a motorcycle mirror and put on lipstick, then strolls inside and pulls out a gun.

Tony and Ivy are best friends. This being the case, he’s obliged to go along with her, even though he believes it when the boss says that he and his associates will hunt them down and kill them for this. Ivy isn’t stupid, however. She wouldn’t get them into this much trouble for a few lousy bucks. She’s doing it for the drug which she knows they have in their possession. As she drips it into Tony’s eyes, causing streaks of colour to explode across the black and white frame, they discuss what it means. With the aid of this drug, with all that it enables them to see, they can embark on a quest to meet God.

A hugely ambitious first feature from director Thales Banzai, Tony Odyssey repeatedly bites off more than it can chew, but it has lots of great ideas, both conceptual and visual. It also has a pulsing soundtrack which will grab your attention right at the start and, even when it gives way to slower pieces, does a lot to keep the film engaging when the narrative drifts.

The central performances also work well. Tony’s sweet and sometimes rather hapless approach to life is well balance by Ivy’s low stakes fierceness and general playfulness. Over time he becomes more confident, as the trip enables him to explore hitherto unaddressed issues in his past, whilst she becomes more philosophical. Both are confident that their youth and style will see them win the day, and they are supported in this by a manic narrator, whom some viewers will be entertained by and others will quickly find themselves wanting to throttle.

Though there is a fair measure of eroticism in the film – all of it wonderfully body positive and age-positive, in keeping with an overall joyfully inclusive approach – there is never a hint of such feelings between the protagonists, whose connection rests on a powerful bond of friendship. The warmth this contributes to the film allows it to explore uncomfortable themes from time to time without surrendering its generally upbeat mood.

The difficulty with basing a narrative around a trip lies in the sheer quantity of artistic freedom it offers. It’s all too easy to lose one’s way, and fail to maintain an adequately coherent narrative, when any whim might be indulged. Banzai occasionally falls foul of this. Some scenes are overlong and wander too liberally after they have said all they really have to say. For the most part, however, he keeps a firm grip on proceedings. A five chapter structure helps, with each part fairly self-contained, focusing on a new location and experience. The second of these takes place in an avant-garde café where people recite poetry and discourse on their feelings about art, allowing for a degree of meta-textual play, and the ending does something similar, with a delightful perspective-altering final shot.

Tripping is an innately self-centred experience. We can’t know what is real here, within the world of the film, and what fantasy, but there are still moral questions to answer, especially when deaths occur. How much responsibility do Tony and Ivy bear, and to what extent is collateral damage justified by their mission? During the middle chapter, we see marketers plotting the end of the world. There’s a suggestion that one or other of the protagonists is destined to save it, but notions of destiny can be tricky things. As the narrator asks, “Who is truly safe when...heroes leave their holes to have fun?”

Reviewed on: 26 Apr 2026