![]() ![]() If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad that probably makes little sense to you. The story follows Jesse trying to gather enough money from his dead ex-captors (a white supremacy gang) so he can pay a guy called Ed to invent a new identity for him so he can escape the police. But if entertainment was only made for necessary purposes and without love, life would be boring. But one way or the other, this movie doesn’t feel like it was made out of some corporate deal (even if it was), and genuinely seems to have some love behind it. ![]() With that in mind, the only reason I can think of that this film was made was simply because the writers wanted too… And also probably because Breaking Bad is on Netflix, and making a Breaking Bad movie exclusive to that platform was probably quite appealing to the streaming service. It is set after the end of Breaking Bad and more or less wraps up the character arc of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) in a much longer-winded way than the actual finale of the show did. For fans, it’ll be tucked away in a Netflix crawlspace, waiting to be rediscovered.El Camino is a very unnecessary film. ‘El Camino’ may not hit the highs of the show, but it’s definitely not unpicking its legacy either. Gilligan drops in the odd showy visual grace note, including a brilliant time-lapsed overhead shot of Jesse tearing up an apartment apart in true, stash-hunting style, and the show’s trademark killer musical cues (add Dr Hook’s ‘Sharing the Night Together’ to your ‘Breaking Bad’ playlist). It’s in evidence here too, albeit in smaller doses, with the perils of corpse disposal gleaning season-one-style laughs and the sporadic bursts of violence getting nicely absurdist payoffs (‘Dude, you’re on fire’, a bystander tells Jesse after a sudden gun battle). A later flashback briefly reintroduces Walter, though to no particular effect.Īt its routine best, ‘Breaking Bad’ married real darkness with a mordant, Coenesque wit. It toys with investigating the PTSD that came from being caged, chained, beaten, shot at, bereaved and on the run, before heading off on a flashbacked digression involving his gormless captor Todd (Jesse Plemons, hilarious) that sees ‘El Camino’ spinning its wheels before it gets moving. Gilligan picks him up right after the ‘Breaking Bad’ finale, wheel-spinning jubilantly to freedom from the massacred neo-Nazis who’d made him their drug cook and Walter White (Bryan Cranston) dead on the ground. He reminds us why we all fell so hard for those hangdog charms in the first place, despite all the monstrous deeds he was complicit in. Paul slips back into Jesse’s skate shoes like he’s never been away. None of this will – or should – put off fans. Instead, ‘El Camino’ is a mostly tension-free traipse around the show’s old haunts and a few of the surviving characters (though frustratingly, there’s no sign of Anna Gunn’s Skyler) with the runtime of a movie but the pacing of the show. You suspect the show’s creator – and the film’s writer-director – Vince Gilligan knows this and doesn’t bother trying. It hit notes that took 62 episodes to build up to, and that are impossible to match in a self-contained spin-off. ![]() Few shows nail the landing with such a dreamlike crescendo of pathos, sadness and violent catharsis (‘The Sopranos’ maybe ‘Game of Thrones’, not so much). ![]() Part of the problem is that ‘Breaking Bad’ ended so perfectly. It’s not bad, by any means – for devotees, it’s a satisfying couple of bonus hours riding shotgun with Albuquerque’s lovable answer to Job: Aaron Paul’s terminally unlucky Jesse Pinkman – but it never gets beyond being a classily-made slice of fan service. Warning: contains ‘Breaking Bad’ spoilers from the startĮver wondered what the first thing Shane did after he rode over the horizon? Or how Red and Andy set to work on that Mexican beach in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’? For those who argue that a perfect ending is best left untouched, this sporadically enjoyable but inessential and often inert Netflix ‘Breaking Bad’ extension is basically exhibit A. ![]()
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