El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie Review (SPOILERS)

One of the more pleasant surprises of 2019 thus was discovering out of the blue that there was a "Breaking Bad" movie coming out this year. It was either during San Diego Comic Con or D23 when Disney was releasing all of the information about everything that Netflix just randomly threw this trailer out onto the internet. Suddenly that became the most exciting thing of the moment because a return to the "Breaking Bad" universe sounded like a great idea, especially since it seemed like they were going to resolve Jesse's arc in this movie. The only thing I had to check was to make sure Vince Gilligan was on board with this. When I learned that he was the writer and director, I was instantly sold and I wanted to know nothing more. That's the thing with TV shows. Once I'm committed to watch, even basic plot details are spoilers in my brain. So I avoided everything I could and excitedly checked this out as soon as I could this weekend. As it turns out, this came out a great time for me because, for personal reasons, I decided not to venture out to the theaters this weekend. I was going to get an extra Halloween review in because of that, but then I remembered "El Camino," so that took precedent. Then we'll get to those Halloween reviews later because I have some fun ideas.

You'll notice that I did put up a spoiler banner here and that's for two reasons. The first is that it's literally impossible to talk about "El Camino" without spoiling the ending of "Breaking Bad," given that this happens right after the finale. So if you haven't seen "Breaking Bad," turn tail and run right now. But second, as I said before, when I'm committed to a show, I want to know nothing about it. Even though this is a movie follow-up of the show, I put that in a same category. Given that this is free to watch if you own Netflix, I don't need to persuade you to watch this. If you're a fan of "Breaking Bad," then what are you waiting for? Go watch it. Then come back and check out my thoughts. So yeah, I'm going to treat this like I'm reviewing an episode of a TV show. I'm going to give my full thoughts with the idea in mind that everyone reading them has already watched the episode. No, this is not going to be a deep dive or a play-by-play breakdown of every moment in the movie. But it will be my unfiltered thoughts on what I just experienced without holding back when it comes to spoilers. So if you don't want to know what happens to Jesse, then turn away now. You've been warned. And yes, "Breaking Bad" is required viewing before seeing "El Camino."

Before we dive into "El Camino," I need to quickly give my thoughts on "Breaking Bad" itself, because I've not yet done so on this blog. Nor have I done that anywhere online, I don't think. I've talked to friends and roommates about it and maybe I've mentioned it in passing when talking about Rian Johnson as he directed my two favorite episodes of the show, but otherwise it's something I've not discussed. The reason for that is that I did not watch "Breaking Bad" live on TV. It was one of those shows that I always meant to watch, but just never got around to. Unlike movies, I'm not a TV aficionado. I have my rotation of shows that I watch, but given that shows are a much greater investment of time than movies, it's hard for me to get a new show added to my rotation, unless it's one of these 8-10 episode Netflix shows that I can quickly binge in a weekend. Because of this, there are a lot of great shows that I've simply never gotten around to. For the longest time, "Breaking Bad" was one of them. However, once I finally decided to commit to it, it didn't take me long at all to finish it. Given that there's only around 60 episodes, I cruised through it rather quickly. It's one of those shows that makes you continue watching and I easily submitted, finishing it in a month or so.

And, yeah, like most people on the planet who have let this show into their lives, I absolutely loved it. One of my favorite show of all-time? Well, I don't know about that. I honestly don't know what that list would look like for me. But "Breaking Bad" is a fascinating character study following two main characters whose lives spiral out of control. It's a show that doesn't sugar-coat anything as it instead decides to show the realistic consequences of making bad decisions. Like most movies or shows centered around drugs, the overall message is that drugs are bad. Don't do drugs. Don't make drugs. Don't sell drugs. Regardless of how much money you think it'll make you or how much better your life might be improved, drugs will always ruin your life. Yet people still don't get this because their carnal, human instincts get the best of them. Money and addiction speaks louder than logic. And in "Breaking Bad" it's really sad seeing characters you care about see their lives spiral downward out of control. With Walter White, you see him transform from a desperate high school teacher into a monster. Not only does he ruin his own life, but the lives of everyone he loves are also ruined, with many innocent lives being lost along the way, like Hank Schrader and Jessica Jones.

The show doesn't wrap up with a pretty bow, but it wraps up in the most perfect way given how grounded it was in realism, leaving one emotionally distressed and forever impacted with its honest, human themes. While it may or may not make my personal list of favorite shows ever made, the third to last episode, Rian Johnson's "Ozymandias," is one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen. Even though there was only two episodes left, after watching that episode for the first time, I was so emotionally torn to shreds that I couldn't finish the series at that point. I had to turn it off and give myself a day or two to recover. I think it's very fitting that the episode has a perfect 10.0 score on IMDb with 107,057 votes counted. Not to say that no one has ever given it less than 10, but so many thousands of people have that the average is a perfect 10, which is extremely rare on IMDb. Eventually I did finish the final two episodes and it was a fitting ending. However, there was one loose thread that remained unresolved and that was Jesse Pinkman. Yes, I did like the idea of him riding off into the sunset. I connected the dots as to what could've happened to him, thus I didn't NEED this movie to happen. But if Vince Gilligan wanted to tell it, I'm all game.

That's what makes "El Camino" a very satisfying movie. It didn't feel like a scenario where AMC, Netflix or creator Vince Gilligan was milking the show for all they could get. This wasn't some sort of bridge movie that sets up a Jesse Pinkman spin-off series. In fact, I'll say straight up that this is no "Ozymandias." This feels like a simple "Breaking Bad" epilogue that Vince Gilligan honestly wanted to tell as a means to tie up loose ends. As I envision it, he probably looked at everything he's created in this universe and had most things wrapped up like he wanted. I believe he's also having fun getting into more backstory with "Better Call Saul." But I can see the Jesse Pinkman story being the one thing nagging at him as the giant elephant in the room. And perhaps he wanted to tell this story right from the beginning, but couldn't naturally fit it in, so he settled with what he did initially with the finale. Then as time went on, the lack of closure with Jesse probably nagged at him, so he finally took the time to do a quick movie to make himself feel better. No, there's not a lot that happens in this movie. But there's just enough to give everyone some closure. With this in mind, I was a bit surprised as some narrative choices that they took, but ultimately I wound up very pleased with the final result.

The best thing here is seeing Aaron Paul so seamlessly jump back into this role of Jesse Pinkman. It's a role in which he rightfully won three Emmys for, while getting nominated for a total of five. Yet even though it's now been five years since the finale, he immediately jumps right back into character as if he never left, which is good because this picks up the second "Breaking Bad" left off. Jesse was in a very damaged and broken state at the end of "Breaking Bad," given that he was taken captive and locked up like an animal before he escaped. This is why Aaron Paul's performance here in "El Camino" is so good. He does an excellent job of recapturing the moment he was in and then gives a very emotional performance, reminding us of how broken his character was when we left off. Even though we all envisioned Jesse riding off into the sunset, we are quickly reminded that the world of "Breaking Bad" is grounded in reality. Things are not fine. Even though Jesse escaped being captured, he is most certainly not out of the woods as the rest of the city is figuring out exactly what just happened, making Jesse most wanted figure No. 1 in the eyes of the police. One wrong move and he takes the fall for everything, making this whole thing extremely stressful and intense.

And it's going down that avenue where we get a lot of classic "Breaking Bad" moments in this movie. One thing Vince Gilligan is great at is setting up tension. And it's a fairly unique tension because the protagonists in the show are people who aren't doing good things, yet for the most part we are cheering for them to get away with it. And we are cheering for them because there's an added level of humanity to their characters. Now Walter White is a completely different conversations that I'll save for another time, but in regards to Jesse Pinkman, he's the one that's always felt like the victim in all of this. It's partially his fault for allowing for himself to get involved in the first place, but at the same time, I spent the whole series hoping he can somehow get his life together and get out of this. Yet that's certainly easier said than done because the drug industry is not something you can resign from and walk away. A lot of the tension in the show came from when a lot of the higher level drug lords put themselves into the picture and confronted our protagonists. And it's the uncertainty behind what's going to happen in those situations that made things so intense, especially since most of the show is spent portraying reality wherein things do end bad with main characters meeting a bitter end.

But Jesse escaped all of that. I was happy that he was the one person who was able to have some sort of semblance of a happy ending. Thus there was a part of me that was hoping "El Camino" was going to be all rainbows and butterflies because it would horrifically awful if Vince Gilligan ending "Breaking Bad" in a way that gave us hope for Jesse Pinkman, then created an epilogue five years later where we learn that Jesse got gunned down by a thug five minutes after escaping or got arrested and sentenced to life in prison the next day when police started raiding things. Yet given that this is a "Breaking Bad" movie, I was very well aware that such a fate wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities, which made it really nerve-wracking when he was searching for the money in the apartment and the police walked in or when he found himself back in a room with some other thugs. It left me with an extreme feeling of dread that I'm not going to get the happy ending I want and I was ready to accept that because that's the honest reality of things here. And there were some pretty good bait-and-switches that had me convinced that Jesse Pinkman just got arrested or just walked into a room that he wasn't going to walk out of. The surprises there ending up being quite satisfying.

Now I will also say that this did have some other classic "Breaking Bad" moments, albeit moments that I don't think are quite as positive. This is the one big issue I have with the show that makes me not quite join the club of people who think it's the greatest show ever made. And that issue is that "Breaking Bad" has a lot of downtime. While there's some obvious exceptions, especially in season 5, the average episode structure was that something really intense happened at the beginning of the episode and something really intense happened at the end of the episode. But there's a lot of time in the middle that felt like filler. In the grand scheme of things, a lot of this filler adds to the reality of the fact that life is not always an ongoing drama. There's also plenty of character development in these smaller moments that make our characters more interesting in the long run. But it still doesn't excuse the fact that we have to use the "B-word" in describing "Breaking Bad" at times. Boring. And on that note, at least half of "El Camino" was quite slow. I was a bit frustrated at that. We didn't have our typical 10-episode season. We had two hours, which is essentially two episodes and change. So if we only have that much time to finish this story, why are we dragging our feet?

But as is typical, while I was bored at times in the moment, a lot of the downtime ended up justifying its existence in the long run and helped develop some actual closure. A lot of this came from flashbacks where we were able to get one final moment with a lot of characters that we loved from "Breaking Bad." And while this easily could've fallen into the realm of unnecessary fan service, each returning character ended up adding something important to the overall resolution of Jesse's arc. Conversations with Walter White, Mike and Jessica Jones (OK, fine, her name is Jane in this show) tied in directly to decisions that Jesse made at the end. We got a lot of extra time with Jesse and Todd while Jesse was in captivity that also correlated with modern events when Jesse was facing who he thought were the police that shows that Jesse is not a killer, but is a genuinely good human being who got caught in a bad situation. We also see the return of his friends Badger and Skinny Pete who help him escape from the police because of their high level of respect for him, again adding to Jesse's character. And then of course we bring back Robert Forster's Ed, the guy who helps people change their identities. Sadly Robert Forster died the day this movie debuted. May he rest in peace.


It was great seeing all of these characters back, but it was better that Vince Gilligan found ways to use them appropriately to add to Jesse's story. When all is said and done, Jesse does get a second chance at life. At first I thought it was a bit anti-climatic. I thought the movie was building towards some sort of crazy ending, but that never happens. As it turns out, the movie's biggest moment is a Western-style gun fight with this movie's main villain. I didn't think that was the finale, though. It felt like something else was going to happen afterwards. But it didn't. Jesse ended up getting all the money he needed to Ed. He successfully evaded all of the police. He got one final conversation with his Mom and Dad. Then Ed dropped him off in Alaska where he begins a new life as someone else. And maybe he'll even go back to college and get a business degree like Walter White suggested to him in their final flashback moment. It all worked. In theory, this is the type of ending I could've envisioned in my head. So perhaps this wasn't the most necessary thing, but I was still very satisfying to see it play out for real.  If I consider this a double-episode bonus of "Breaking Bad," it's not going to considered the best episode of the series. But it's still a solid one that I'll give an 8/10.