Review - El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

So, this is a bit odd, isn't it? We're all of a sudden back talking about Breaking Bad, a show whose finale in 2013 was so neatly and perfectly constructed that there was surely no way we would ever get a follow-up. And now, six years later, here is such a follow-up, coming to us as El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Before we start digging into this too deeply, I want to say two things. First, if you haven't seen the show, I don't even know what you're doing here. I'm going to try and steer clear of any plot elements but Breaking Bad is a show that deserves to be seen by everyone, as cold as possible, so go away and watch all of it right now. Secondly though, this is a film I did not want to happen and as I write this piece, weigh up the film in my head, that will be sitting over me the whole time. I felt that even with the ambiguity we got from Jesse's ending, it was about as perfect an ending as you can get, so what is the point in telling more story? The answer is that this is less of another chapter, an attempt to end the show again, more an epilogue for a character, a two hour goodbye to the boy who deserved better. And you know what, it kind of works. Kind of. It's so tricky to judge, because when you invest so much time in characters and a world you love, you're grateful to be given a new experience with them, no matter how brief. What we get isn't full of game changing twists or massive plot revelations like you might expect from a movie epilogue to a TV show, but neither is it a completely divergent breed of insanity like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was to what preceded it. It is just good and pure and I don't know if it needed to be more.

This whole film is balanced on the shoulders of Aaron Paul. [...] If he slipped up at any point, the entire film would instantly collapse

Performances are a little bit of a tricky thing to talk about here, because with the level of secrecy that this project has had, even revealing which characters and actors appear could be construed as a spoiler. Fine then, I'll steer clear of naming many names explicitly, although pretty much everyone who returns is just as great as they've always been, with one major caveat. This film is set directly after the events of the finale (which I'll get to later), meaning that actors are having to portray characters who have not aged in the way they, as actors susceptible to the passage of time, have over the last six years. In some cases, it means they act younger than they look, in others it means that some make up and "effects" have had to be used to recreate aspects of characters. Sometimes it works, but it doesn't always. There are also a couple of new characters who come along and they are all great. It's a tricky balance to sort, with familiar faces on one side and new faces that we know we'll never see again on the other, but Gilligan does a fine job at it. This whole film though is balanced on the shoulders of Aaron Paul, an actor who has struggled to escape the shadow of Breaking Bad much more than co-star Bryan Cranston. Famously, Jessie Pinkman, his character, was originally due to be killed off at the end of the first season but over the course of the writer's strike, the writers of the show realised that Paul had brought a depth to the character that they hadn't anticipated. Who could have predicted that ten years later, that would lead to his character getting two hours, dedicated to Jesse Pinkman above all else? The ironic thing is, this film reminds us why it is that Paul has had such a hard time leaving the character of Jesse behind, because he brings depth to what should be a bland cardboard cut-out of a character. If he slipped up at any point, the entire film would instantly collapse. He never does. Not once. Not even a shake.

The single greatest weakness of this film is, admirably, provided in its own title. This does not get to exist as El Camino, it is instead El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, a movie that is shackled to one of the most beloved TV shows of all time. The baggage for that is two-fold, firstly that reaching the heights of Breaking Bad again, six years later, for two hours, is quite the ask, and one that El Camino is sadly not quite up to. The second part is that this is a filmic spin-off of something that worked so well precisely because it existed as episodic television. As it is so eloquently spelled out in the pilot of Breaking Bad, "Chemistry is the study of change" and over five seasons, the great joy of the show was studying the change, not just in Walt and Jesse, but in the lives of those around them, who picked up collateral damage at ever increasing rates. When you try and take something successful like that and transplant it onto a two hour run time, it doesn't really work as well as it should. This is only such a shame because the construction of the film itself is brilliant, it looking, sounding and feeling like a proper movie. Plenty of times, I started whispering praise to myself at a brilliant camera technique, even getting a little overexcited at a really well executed montage in the second act and there were many moments of tension that reminded me of some of my favourite scenes from the show. It feels like a step up in terms of production budgets and effort, but it really disappoints me to say the quality does take a slight dip compared to the sky-high standards of what came before.

No one likes saying goodbye to properties they love

And now is the point where we logically compare the spin-off film of a show about cooking and pedalling meth to Toy Story 4. Yes, I sound crazy, but please bear with me for a little bit. In the case of both, I felt that the previous instalments (those being the finale of Breaking Bad and Toy Story 3) both acted as perfect endings to their stories and character arcs. No one likes saying goodbye to properties they love (a fact that is especially hit home because the song from the Community finale just came on while I was writing this) but it's hard to say no to a satisfying ending, because no one wants to be the next Dexter or House of Cards. And then this year, after many rumours and much anticipation, Breaking Bad and Toy Story returned, with new content that is made with such an impressive level of craft and care and that doesn't damage the impact of those precious things that came before it, both being set surprisingly close to the events we last saw, as opposed to going by "real world" time. They also leave me slightly cold. I like El Camino more than I liked Toy Story 4 but with both, while they were nice snacks, I can't help but feel like my world would not be much poorer were they not in them. Some love these and I am happy for them, truly, but they are entries that are inessential to my adoration of what came before, though they do not tarnish those memories.

Really, this film shouldn't exist and even now that it does, it makes no massively compelling case that it absolutely has to exist. The question you need to ask yourself is if that matters to you. If a chance to spend two more hours with characters you love is what you want, I don't think this film will disappoint you, but I can't see it doing much more than that. El Camino does not reinvent how we see one of the most acclaimed and beloved shows ever made (because honestly, how could it?) but it is a ride worth taking for fans of the show. That's why I'm going to give it a