Breaking Bad is one of the greatest shows of the 21st century so making a follow up, epilogue style film over half a decade since the show ended was always going to be something of a risky move. But El Camino provides fans of the show with a proper ending to the story of Heisenberg’s drug empire as we see the aftermath of Walter White’s demise, and more importantly we come to learn what happened to Jesse Pinkman, the character that was arguably the emotional crux of the entire series, once he has been freed from captivity at the hands of a white supremacist group.
The film centres solely on Pinkman getting out of dodge, going completely underground and leaving his entire past behind him. It acts at times as a ‘greatest hits’ of sorts with cameos from lots of memorable characters from the show, and how Jesse’s relationship with them has changed since the death of Walter, or how they were trying to help him begin his journey out of the drug trade prior to their deaths on the show.
The film looks and plays out exactly as you would expect from Breaking Bad, so expect gorgeous cinematography, a slow burn pace and lots of intense dialogue sequences. This is not an action packed film, this is a goodbye to a character we never thought we might get to say goodbye to.
If I were to have some significant criticisms, it falls mainly with how I feel like there was not enough coverage of how Walter’s actions in the shows final episodes affected the community at large; and there is also a lot of time spent on some new antagonist characters that had supposedly been a big part of Jesse’s imprisonment, yet weren’t in the show and it feels a little off and at times like an afterthought for the sake of having a ‘villain’ for Jesse to fight against.
Ultimately El Camino is a great epilogue for Breaking Bad fans, though there is nothing for newcomers to the show to really latch onto unlike other post-series film epilogues such as Serenity or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
The film centres solely on Pinkman getting out of dodge, going completely underground and leaving his entire past behind him. It acts at times as a ‘greatest hits’ of sorts with cameos from lots of memorable characters from the show, and how Jesse’s relationship with them has changed since the death of Walter, or how they were trying to help him begin his journey out of the drug trade prior to their deaths on the show.
The film looks and plays out exactly as you would expect from Breaking Bad, so expect gorgeous cinematography, a slow burn pace and lots of intense dialogue sequences. This is not an action packed film, this is a goodbye to a character we never thought we might get to say goodbye to.
If I were to have some significant criticisms, it falls mainly with how I feel like there was not enough coverage of how Walter’s actions in the shows final episodes affected the community at large; and there is also a lot of time spent on some new antagonist characters that had supposedly been a big part of Jesse’s imprisonment, yet weren’t in the show and it feels a little off and at times like an afterthought for the sake of having a ‘villain’ for Jesse to fight against.
Ultimately El Camino is a great epilogue for Breaking Bad fans, though there is nothing for newcomers to the show to really latch onto unlike other post-series film epilogues such as Serenity or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.