El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

One aimed squarely at fans of the series, El Camino is a hit of pure nostalgia, powered by a fantastic performance from Aaron Paul, and serving as an emotionally satisfying coda to Breaking Bad’s masterful final episode.

Premise: Having escaped his imprisonment at the hands of Todd (Jesse Plemons) and the neo-Nazi drug gang, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) is a broken man, but his struggle for survival is not over yet.

Review:

Although this is described as a “film” (and it is unquestionably shot in a suitably cinematic style by writer/director/creator Vince Gilligan), for an intents and purposes El Camino is an extended epilogue episode of Breaking Bad, set after the events of its critically acclaimed 2013 series finale. I say this not to denigrate El Camino in any way (Breaking Bad was, after all, one of the greatest TV shows of all time), but to make it clear that El Camino is aimed squarely at fans of the show, and it’s not something that will make a lot of sense to anyone who hasn’t seen the show before (even with Netflix’s helpful “Previously on Breaking Bad...” recap at the start of the film.

As a fan of the show, I was very excited when I first heard about El Camino, but it’s important to bear in mind that making a follow up epilogue to a well-received final episode of a TV show can be a very difficult balancing act. On the one hand, viewers want to see more of the things that they loved about the TV show in question, but on the other hand, you have to be very careful not to undo the poignancy of the series finale by continuing the story after the camera faded to black. For example, I used to enjoy Prison Break back in the day, and thought the final episode provided a bittersweet conclusion to the story – but then the belated fifth season undid a lot of that emotional impact. Even the London-set mini-series for 24 didn’t provide as satisfying a conclusion as the end of the show’s original run. Given that Breaking Bad’s final episode is considered to be one of the greatest TV show finales of all time, it was vital that El Camino did not undermine any of that impact. *Spoilers for Breaking Bad below*

“…a near-perfect combination of nostalgia and closure…”

Thankfully, El Camino offers a near-perfect combination of nostalgia and closure, without ever undermining the events of the series finale. So Walter White is still dead – there’s no left-field twist revealing that he survived the shootout at the neo-Nazi compound – and everything else from the final few episodes of Breaking Bad, including Saul Goodman having been “disappeared” to Nebraska, still stands. But whereas Walter's and Saul’s stories felt like they had reached a satisfying resolution in the final episodes of Breaking Bad, Jesse’s story always felt like it lacked closure; as we saw him speeding away from his captivity in Todd’s stolen El Camino, we didn’t know what the future held for him.

El Camino provides those answers, picking up immediately from the end of the series finale, with Jesse bursting through the gates of the compound to the sound of approaching police sirens. But what it also does, perhaps unsurprisingly, is flashback to relevant-but-unseen incidents that occurred during the TV show’s original run, giving us an insight into the events that shape Jesse’s actions in the “present”.

“…unquestionably and unapologetically Aaron Paul’s movie…”

I don’t want to spoil the content of those flashbacks, but I will say that a lot of them focus on Jesse’s time with Todd (Jesse Plemons) during his months-long imprisonment. The relationship between Todd and Jesse was always a fascinating one, given that they were superficially both Walt’s protégés at one point or another. Jesse Plemons gives an unsettling final performance as Todd, capturing the full psychopathy of the dead-eyed but almost child-like killer.

But as good as Jesse Plemons is, El Camino is unquestionably and unapologetically Aaron Paul’s movie. Aaron Paul, quite rightly, won several awards for his performance as Jesse Pinkman during Breaking Bad’s original run, but it’s fair to say that he’s not found a movie role since that’s given him the same quality of material to sink his teeth into. It’s therefore a joy to see him return to Pinkman, as the role still gives him so much to work with – whether it’s portraying Jesse’s trauma from his captivity, seeing him survive on his wits and ingenuity, exploring his complex relationship with Todd, or flashing-back to simpler times for Jesse.

“…Vince Gilligan cranks up the tension to almost unbearable levels…”

Aaron Paul is onscreen for almost every scene, and he carries the film effortlessly. Yes, El Camino has a very different feel from Breaking Bad due to Walter White’s absence, but it’s certainly no less enjoyable. And Vince Gilligan has certainly not lost his ability to crank up the tension to almost unbearable levels, as Jesse’s flight from the compound is not as straightforward as viewers may have hoped when they watched the season finale.

For fans of the show, El Camino provides not only closure to the question “what happened to Jesse Pinkman after he escaped the neo-Nazis", and also a nostalgia-fuelled trip to revisit some of the great supporting characters from the show’s history. And really, what more could any fan ask for from a tenth-anniversary movie?