El Camino Impressions
Spoilers are contained below! This is your warning!
This is a hard one to put any kind of number on. It is beautifully crafted, and shot. Aaron Paul slips right back into his role with ease to give his character some finality because Vince Gilligan wanted to finish his story further.
This story is wholly unnecessary, and leaves me unsatisfied. I guess it’s cool to have some of those flashbacks and exploring more of Jesse’s psyche during his time in prison and dealing with the immediate aftermath, but the movie never made a point where it blew me away with a “wow, I’m so glad we finished this story.” To me one of the most emotional moments on any show was Jesse driving away in the finale. He had repeatedly tried to get out and was sucked back in time and time again, so to see him finally free and bust through the chain link fence is a moment I will never forget.
To go and have what basically equates to as another episode, it was just kind of a stop gap that fills in some blanks and then leaves us in the exact same place as before. Personally I never thought “Wait, how is Jesse going to get out if they look for the car? And where is he going to go? And will he talk to his parents again?” It was the idea he was free, I don’t think any of us ever even wanted to consider that he might get caught because it is too tragic for a character that has endured so much suffering. So for this film to end with him now clear from Albuquerque, just leaves me in the same headspace as the series finale.
There really wasn’t an overarching plot to the movie either, but I really did like the flashbacks Jesse thinks of because he is looking back at all these memories and what they mean to him. And Paul does such a great job of conveying these deep internal struggles without hardly any dialogue. The flashbacks also give us time with some classic Breaking Bad characters that we don’t get to see in Better Call Saul and it’s all works as it revolves around Jesse. This could have easily slipped into fan service territory, but thankfully it never does. Gilligan is too smart to just give us a movie that references everything we loved about the show. I compare it to Veronica Mars’ movie which was just the creators and actors all wanting to get together and make something for the fans. Gilligan clearly wanted to lend us into Jesse’s mind here and I appreciate the hell out of him for sticking to that.
The movie is shot very stylistically, it is almost a mix of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. It was also the first time I watched any BrBa-verse in 4K so it looked a lot cleaner and crisp than I’m used to. I don’t know if the other shows have a grain effect but it was noticeable and felt different to see everything without any there.
Maybe I have more thoughts but these are just my initial gut reactions. If I was to ever rewatch all of this universe again, I don’t know if I would watch this too. It provides the same closure I already had just without the satisfying build up and climax. Maybe it works differently after you rewatch/watch the show and work it in immediately after. But revisiting Jesse after over 5 years still felt nice and I’m glad they didn’t make him suffer more.
Real quick just want to say that it was so cool having Walt back there, his screen presence is insane and the build up to his line about accomplishing something was incredible. I’m glad Gilligan found a perfect way to get Bryan Cranston back (and throw in a ‘Bitch’ because I’m sure there would have been riots without one).