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A Breaking Bad movie got my attention since the source material is perhaps the greatest television show of all time. A low budget production with the gritty cast and crew of the show is a major contrast with the overblown CGI Marvel movies. But El Camino is not an ordinary movie. It’s not trying to tell a story. The story of Breaking Bad has already been told. El Camino is an epilogue chapter. It answers one question: what happened to Jessie Pinkman?
This will be a spoiler free review.
If you’ve never seen Breaking Bad, I cannot imagine you would get much enjoyment out of this film. The film is deeply entrenched in the story and if you have not seen the show you really don’t understand how Jessie’s story begins in this film.
However, if you have not watched the series in years, the story provides ample flashbacks, which I question whether some of them were unused footage, from the show. Perhaps a criticism would be that the movie relies too much on flashbacks. But the flashbacks aren’t, for the majority, of scenes in the series. Rather, we see more of what happened to Jessie in the months of his captivity. These events are paramount to the actions Jessie takes upon being a fugitive.
I also appreciate how the trailer with Skinny Pete wasn’t a part of the movie at all. Skinny Pete, was a surprisingly compelling character, during his portion of the movie and Aaron Paul’s performance was excellent as usual.
I found the movie immediately interesting and it maintained the humor and style of Breaking Bad well in its storytelling. It’s like a longer Breaking Bad episode, containing its own meandering journey. Its climax isn’t as great, but it doesn’t need to be, nor would it be realistic for it to be. It’s a man on the run type of story, yet Jessie is running towards something rather than away from something. The story, itself isn’t too surprising yet the way the story goes about reveals the desperate nature of a man’s quest for freedom and new life is captivating. Jessie Pinkman has nothing to lose yet everything to lose simultaneously. His quest for new life has few boundaries or moral code left to break and he wrestles with his limits, desperation, and meager resources. It’s a story of a man fighting post-traumatic stress, a man who cannot undo the past but has a chance to escape (the consequences of) it. Jessie Pinkman is self-aware of his inability to change the past but knows he can seize the initiative to put the past behind him. It’s fascinating to watch his desperation never really translate into malice or ambition to do anything other than moving on.
Once more this presents a strong contrast with Walter White who broke bad, Jessie was bad and is trying to escape the bad he started in. He’s trying to “break good” and it’s a gradual journey for him that he believes begins with a new life. We ultimately don’t have a final answer on what happens to Jessie Pinkman. Ironically, we experience a story of Jessie Pinkman that is almost the same journey as his escape from his previous captivity. The ending is just as open ended as the beginning, but the journey is a story worth telling. My biggest compliment of El Camino is that it does not try to overshadow or outdo Breaking Bad. It instead answers a question.
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