El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

After being liberated from Aryan gang captivity by his dying former partner Walter White (Bryan Cranston), reluctant meth cook Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) wants nothing more than to disappear and start a new life. Ed (Robert Forster, in his last role), a vacuum cleaner salesman/professional disappearer can make that happen, but Jesse will need to get his hands on more money first. Jesse’s deranged former captor Todd (Jesse Plemons) left behind a stash, but unfortunately, Jesse isn’t the only one in search of it.

Six years after wrapping up Breaking Bad, series creator Vince Gilligan brought back much of the old gang (the aforementioned, plus Jesse’s bumbling friends Badger and Skinny Pete as well as fan favorite troubleshooter Mike all make appearances) to explore the aftermath of Walter’s last stand. Given that spinoff series Better Call Saul has stepped into the void in the meantime, El Camino is less of a “must” and more of a “why not,” but it does provide a redemptive arc for a character that the series left in a very dark place.

Appropriately, El Camino is as much a triumph for Paul as its story is for Jesse. Freed from Cranston’s shadow, Paul delivers an impressively complex performance, relying on gesture and expression to capture Jesse’s haggard desperation while also portraying the same character’s cockier, younger self in flashback scenes. Speaking of flashbacks, Plemons is once again singularly unsettling as Todd: an unfailingly polite, friendly, murderous monster utterly without a conscience or any social awareness.

Amid these strong characterizations, the film’s antagonists – a pair of money-grubbing Aryan-connected petty thugs – are lacking in menace and gravitas. We see them as a nuisance rather than a menace, as if Gilligan has played his “more dangerous than they look card” one too many times before. Similarly, Jesse’s mad scramble for money and freedom carries great personal stakes but few broader implications. We never get the sense that his choices are going to cause planes to collide, for instance.

These movie-to-series comparisons are as unfair as they are inevitable, and though it is equally unfair to consider El Camino strictly on its own merits, it nevertheless makes for an entertaining two hours shot with the tense, stylish gusto one can expect from the franchise.