El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

Graham Craycraft

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is the story of Jesse Pinkman’s escape from captivity and journey of out miasma to the final frontier of his life. Aaron Paul and Breaking Bad’s creator Vince Giligan return to create the last leg in the story of Jesse Pinkman. The audience is opened to a brief recap of Breaking Bad and then thrown right into the story of Pinkman’s torture by his captors and run from authorties. 

In the aftermath of the death of Walter White, the police are going to extreme lengths to capture with what they see as the last piece of the puzzle of America’s largest drug empire. Pinkman moves from place to place with his eyes set on true freedom. Returns from characters such as Badger and Skinny Pete help Jesse reach this goal. This film is dark and gritty while still maintaining a little humor of which fans are familiar. Not much however, because Pinkman has been locked up and brutalized for six months and continues to carry those memories with him. 

Gilligan’s style from Breaking Bad returns with a few new aspects. Gilligan has always been a fan of timelapses, long exploring shots of the New Mexico desert, and a camera fixed to a moving object. He also adds, though, extreme closeups and blocked shots which were not abundant in Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul. He makes excellent use of flashbacks to fill in the gaps of Pinkman’s captivity and let the audience know just a taste of the horror he went through.

There are some weaknesses to the movie. First and foremost is dialogue. Some interactions, especially at the beginning, just feel forced. I believe that the forced dialogue is because of two reasons. First, that the film is trying to pick up right where Breaking Bad left off which is tough because it has been six years since the release of the last episode. It’s hard to blame Gilligan and other writers for trying to overcorrect for time. The other issue I see with the dialogue that also bleeds slightly into other aspects of the film is the crutch of nostalgia. Gilligan knows how huge his show was and is and tends to use that feeling of awe a little sloppily. It isn’t blatant, but I hoped he wouldn’t have to rely on that crutch at all. I hoped he would do his thing and let the audience conjure up their own warm remembrance. 

El Camino, like Breaking Bad, tells a much bigger story than just an expansive drug trade. It’s the story of desperation, deceit, sin, and pitiless actors all brought on by (for Jesse) mistakes. There were some obvious and avoidable slip ups in his past, but Pinkman is an extreme example of what can happen if we let our mistakes control us. His faults are magnified far more than any of ours, but it is through this magnification that we can look back at our own lives and mend what mistakes we’ve made. Mike tells Jesse that making things right is the one thing Jesse won’t be able to do, but that shouldn’t apply to us. Jesse tries everything he can to make things right even if it is hopeless.

Good luck, Mr. Driscoll.

88/100