El camino netflix full#
El camino netflix series#

Better Call Saul cinematographer Marshall Adams’ lensing rewards a theatrical experience, especially in its sequences in the desert, and Gilligan gets worthy contributions from Breaking Bad regulars like editor Skip Macdonald and composer Dave Porter, all relishing the return to the original show’s grammar after the very different pacing of the Bob Odenkirk-centric spinoff. Once again, he’s a master of contrasting claustrophobic interiors with expansive Southwestern exteriors and the conception of Breaking Bad as a modern Western - Walter White’s black hat should have tipped you off to the frontier mentality - has never been more clearly (or “obviously” if you wanted to be less generous) articulated and executed. Still, Gilligan remains a precise and complicated visual stylist and there are myriad rewards to seeing him get to work with a big-screen tableau. It needed to be exactly and precisely as unfinished as it was.Īnd now it isn’t anymore, without adding much thematically.

El camino netflix series#

He may have become the moral center of Breaking Bad - Gilligan may also have gotten frustrated with fans who never relinquished their grasp on Walter’s baseline heroism - but he wasn’t exactly “good.” He did empirically awful things and the series wasn’t wrong in thinking that the escape he deserved as the culmination of that transformation wasn’t a clean getaway, a pure victory. Yes, he survives, but to what gain and at what cost?Įxcept that Jesse Pinkman got exactly the ending he deserved in Breaking Bad. And, if you happen to believe that, Jesse gets the short-shrift in the finale. But maybe Gilligan realized, as becomes increasingly clear when you watch and rewatch Breaking Bad, that Walter White may have had the easier-to-encapsulate story but the series narrative truly belongs to Jesse. So Breaking Bad was presented as Walter’s story and “Felina,” the finale, was arced as the conclusion of his story. Chips becoming Scarface, which was Walter’s narrative, and that centrality was reaffirmed, even as the show became closer and closer to a two-hander, by the insistence on submitting Bryan Cranston for “lead” actor Emmys and Paul for “supporting,” a move that meant they never had to go head-to-head for prizes - but also, if we’re being perfectly frank, almost certainly cost Dean Norris and Jonathan Banks Emmys. The best way to rationalize the “need” for this movie, is that Breaking Bad was always perceived and described as Walter White’s story. To me, “Jesse escaped, but I’m sure there were complications” and “He was tortured, duh” were always completely sufficient. Expanding the time frame a tiny bit are a lot of flashbacks, some basically fan-service cameo generators and, in more extended form, answers to the question, “What happened in those months the Nazis were torturing Jesse?” Like I said, I’m not so closure-driven that I needed an answer for that first question and I’m not so imagination-starved that I needed an answer for that second question. It’s a surprisingly small story that Gilligan wanted to tell and it’s designed for viewers who asked, “But after he drove away, it’s not like Jesse just drove out of town, right?” and actually needed specifics on all of his next steps. The movie, with a running time of a solid two hours, is the immediate aftermath of that frenzied exit, not really in real time, but with enough sequences of the kind of step-by-step, tension-building process that fans of Breaking Bad and Saul have come to expect. Keeping spoilers to a bare minimum - assuming you’ve watched Breaking Bad - El Camino picks up instantly in the aftermath of the 2013 Breaking Bad finale, with Jesse (Paul) driving away from the firefight that left a lot of Nazis, and also Bryan Cranston’s Walter White, dead. It just gives answers I’m not sure I cared about to questions I’m not sure I asked.

At least it’s unnecessary in an innocuous and entertaining way. It’s also - and this is not an insignificant problem - largely unnecessary as it pertains to the larger Breaking Bad narrative.

El camino netflix full#

It looks great, sounds great and if you’re a fan, it’s full of cameos and references that are sure to amuse. El Camino is a high-quality piece of suspense and action filmmaking carried by Paul’s still-tremendous performance as Jesse Pinkman. No, but there’s nothing disastrous about that.