El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie Review

October 11, 2019 at 3:42pm
By Jason Stettner

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is a Netflix Original film that continues the series from the point where it ended so many years ago. It follows Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) as he deals with being on the run, attempting to escape and so many flashbacks. This film is largely just flashbacks that they’ve created to pad time, and to give too much context into the situations this character finds himself within.

It feels like a stretched out episode of the show, which is fine yet not executed in the best way here. It definitely wraps up the story line nicely, but so did the conclusion of the show many years back. This one creates some random tense moments, drags on and then feels as though it ties things up about the same as how it was prior to this coming out.

There are some nice cameos present, so it feels almost just like a mini reunion of flashbacks. There’s not much to the actual narrative, fairly typical on the run situation. Just, it’s done with a Breaking Bad style which means some surprises along the way. Some things you might not expect, a definitely more intimate and focused tale.

Aaron Paul was great here as Jesse Pinkman, once again captures that character perfectly. I would say that he delivered something perhaps even more intense than his performance on the series. You could see and feel the atmosphere around this truly broken person that gets even more desperate as things progress.

The other characters were alright, Jesse Plemons looked a bit too different as Todd here. I won’t go over anyone else, as those are more fun to see during the experience as they’re presented. This was really well shot, looked excellent from a cinematography stand point. They presented the tension well, quite gripping at times.

They did have a weird set of antagonists in this one and some super strange western type moment. You’ll know what I mean when it comes up, felt really out of place and almost like an oddity. That segment was disappointing, as those folks were very interesting when they were initially introduced.

The Conclusion

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie feels like an alright extension of the show, they didn’t take the concept as far as they could have however. It was mostly just a series of stretched out flashbacks to setup the present, that really weren’t needed. The pacing was rather poor, and while it had tension, those scenes felt slow. I wasn’t expecting this to be action packed at all, but it could have been trimmed to keep things flowing.

If you enjoyed the regular show, then you’ll likely have to watch this to know what happens. That being said, it won’t really give you anything more that you need to know. It basically just ends up in almost the same type of situation. It does give you more time in this universe, with many characters you know and some surprises along the way. It felt like the show which was great, but I don’t feel it gave enough for me to be particularly thrilled about its existence.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Content Access was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 5.8