Friday, October 11, 2019

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) Review






El Camino feels like if Peter Jackson had shot and directed one of the endings to Return Of The King several years after its release. It's a matter-of-fact nostalgic revisit to the environment created in Breaking Bad, with little thematic or storyline development.

The film takes place directly after the events of the series finale, where former meth cook Jesse Pinkman is now on the run from the law. Most of the runtime is spent on retconning certain plot points into the show so the film could take advantage of them and justify its existence. This also enables writer-director-producer Gilligan to reintroduce beloved characters with little fanfare(if you're not already a fan of the series, ignore the film, as it entirely depends on you having seen it).

To avoid spoiler territory, I'd argue that whilst the film provides some kind of closure for Jesse's character, there's little to nothing here that one couldn't have derived from Breaking Bad. We knew Jesse had escaped. We knew he was either going to start over or end up taking his own life.

I feel like El Camino could have done something new and sent Jesse into an unexpected direction(Gilligan in fact has a reputation for pulling the rug out from under our feet), but instead, it's content to simply... exist, as if the fact that it's new Breaking Bad material is enough to justify its very existence.

In the film's favor, the acting and cinematography are all top notch and continue the expected quality. Whilst you can sense that the actors have all aged a little, it doesn't matter too much. We're happy to see them again, and they do as good of a job as they ever did(most notably Aaron Paul in his depiction of PTSD), but the material just isn't very strong by the standards set by Gilligan himself.

Overall, it's not a bad experience by any means, but I was left empty. El Camino lacked a spark, and thus never burst to life and left much of an impact.







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