Review: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

A Plot Like A Run-On Sentence

By John Cappello

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which I’m sure you were interested in seeing or have already seen if you clicked on this review, was released some time last week on Netflix.

And it’s pretty bad.

Not just bad like in a bad movie kind of way (but it is bad in that way, too). But ultimately, it’s a waste of time. The plot, if you can call it that, concerns Jesse Pinkman’s life immediately following his happy-ending, great escape in the final minutes of Breaking Bad’s final episode “Felina.” If you don’t want to be spoiled, I guess stop reading this review, but honestly there isn’t much to be spoiled on because nothing really happens. That’s because El Camino feels less like a story and more like a run-on sentence. Jesse comes driving in after being caged and tortured by Neo-Nazis in the final season of Breaking Bad, and he doesn’t even have a second to process what he went through before he begins the long process of trying to move on from that. The goal of the plot isn’t clear from the beginning, so much of the plot of El Camino is just trying to figure out what the heck Jesse’s unspoken plan is. And believe me, there is a plan. We just don’t know it until the third act of the movie. So half of the movie is Jesse traipsing around from location to location, in long exhaustive scenes of Aaron Paul performing errands by himself, with no clear objective.

The other half of the movie is comprised of flashback sequences, mostly with Jesse Plemons’s Todd, in what has to be the only remotely enjoyable scenes of the movie. Again, if you’re worried about spoilers, don’t be. Because nothing happens. Those flashback sequences, like the main plot, are about Jesse running errands.

But a movie isn’t just about things happening. We also need to talk about character! And development! Which this doesn’t have either. If you thought that Jesse would be going through “a lot” after being tortured by Neo-Nazis and seeing his girlfriend shot in the head right in front of him, well, guess again, because he doesn’t. Jesse might have PTSD, but we don’t really know, because the idea of it is only addressed in one scene at the beginning, and after that it’s never shown again. Does Jesse feel pain? Does he feel anger? Does he feel anything? We don’t know, because nothing about Jesse’s state of mind is portrayed internally or externally. We’re just left to guess what he’s going through as we’re treated to a mixture of a task list-oriented plot with no clear tasks, and a character study without a character. Perhaps most audaciously, Jesse’s trauma and coping with it is treated more like set dressing rather than the focus of the story.

For all of the flashy camera shots in this movie, they’re compounded by a lack of story substance. Ultimately, this movie feels like an afterthought. A forced attempt to expand on a franchise because a lot of cash was offered. Vince Gilligan worked overtime to convince us in interviews leading up to the movie that El Camino was in the works since before Breaking Bad’s end, that it was a story worth telling and would provide closure that we couldn’t possibly imagine on our own. But that was just some good ol’ fashioned Hollywood marketing blue-balling. Jesse’s fate post-Breaking Bad isn’t a story in itself. Ultimately, El Camino takes two hours to tell us what could have been answered in a single interview question: Jesse goes to Alaska like Walt did briefly in Breaking Bad’s penultimate episode. The destination, while not particularly interesting, is even more unbearable after slogging through this snooze fest of a movie that lacks any substance or even, God forbid, entertainment.

I want to save you the time that I wasted on this movie and just confirm for you what you’re ultimately watching the movie to see: Yes, Walter White is dead. Yes, Bryan Cranston cameos in an utterly uninteresting and pointless flashback scene where he brings up the unthinkable idea of college for Jesse. Jonathan Banks also shows up at the beginning as Mike, in a flashback where he tells Jesse to go to Alaska. Yes, Aaron Paul says “Bitch” like maybe once. Walter White’s family isn’t mentioned. Meth isn’t cooked. Is El Camino a soft pilot for a sequel series centered around Jesse Pinkman? Probably. That’s what it feels like.

El Camino contains all the Hallmarks of shameless franchise building: unnecessary cameos of beloved characters, a soulless, gutless half-assed slog of a plot, and promise of more to come. Sadly, what it doesn’t contain is any of the thrill, charm, concise but dense plotting, or mesmerizing character development that made Breaking Bad so fun. 

But I’m not an idiot, reader! I know better. My opinion doesn’t matter to you. I must not be a true fan of Breaking Bad if I don’t unquestionably love everything Breaking Bad related. You will defy my heed and watch the movie anyway because Breaking Bad was your favorite TV show 5 years ago and you MUST be a faithful fan and watch the “real” ending. You MUST see it for yourself so that you can develop your own opinion. You must prove me, some guy on the Internet criticizing a popular franchise of pop culture significance, wrong. Fine. 

That’s where we are, culturally-speaking. El Camino is the pop culture equivalent of McDonald’s: familiar, iconic. You’ve heard of it, but that doesn't mean it won't give you the shits afterwards. And like McDonald’s, we eat it simply because it is in our face, marketed to us relentlessly by a mega-corporation with the capital and reach to put it directly in our face. It doesn’t need to be good. We will eat it anyway.