Breaking Bad was always about difficult situations. Vince Gilligan’s lauded crime series regularly placed its protagonists, odd-couple meth-cooking team Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Paul), in a seemingly inescapable trap, ramping up the complications and tension to cuticle-chewing degrees before revealing the pair’s usually ingenious exit route. Typically, it was Walt who did all the problem-solving, while incredulous Jesse looked on, until the time came to cheer the results (“Yeah, bitch! Magnets!”). El Camino is pure Breaking Bad in the way it lays out one, big, feature-length difficult situation: namely Jesse getting the fuck out of Dodge. But this time there’s no Heisenberg to help out.
If we’re completely honest, Cranston’s presence is missed, but it can’t be helped — Walt definitely breathed his last on the floor of that meth lab. And he’s not missed as much as you might expect. Heisenberg’s story is over; Mr Chips became Scarface. Now it’s Jesse’s turn. Paul has to carry the film — he’s in virtually every scene, and his shoulders are strong enough to bear the load, knowing the character as intimately as he does.
El Camino feels more like a Western than anything Vince Gilligan has done before.
Besides, he’s got plenty of Breaking Bad company. While the story picks up from the very second we last saw Jesse, hurtling down the road in an El Camino, it also furnishes the narrative with extensive flashbacks. So as well as enjoying a brief reunion with his old bros Badger (Matt Jones) and Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) post-breakout, we also get to explore Jesse’s tricky relationship with Todd (Jesse Plemons), the polite psycho who killed his girlfriend and acted as his chief jailer during Jesse’s horrific incarceration and enslavement by Uncle Jack’s gang. These scenes are initially a little strange, given how much Plemons has physically changed since making the show (although Paul remarkably doesn’t look a day older), but the mind adjusts after a little while. There are other guest appearances too, both in the ‘now’ timeline and the ‘then’, but they’re best enjoyed unheralded.
It’s not just the familiar faces which make this film a must for any Breaking Bad fan — and this is Breaking Bad, not a distinct side narrative like Better Call Saul. Writer/director Vince Gilligan keeps the same steady, detail-oriented pace — both in terms of plot advancement and character development — and maintains the vivid, slightly askew visual style which distinguished the show throughout its five seasons, from the dancing, time-lapsed skyscapes to the desolate beauty of the New Mexico desert, where anything (or anyone) can disappear forever. Although El Camino feels more like a Western than anything he’s done before, even going full-on Sergio Leone come the climax. It might be a bit too much for some, but in a sense it represents Jesse coming of age as a character. He’s no longer the sidekick, the comic-relief, the bruised, battered and befuddled victim. He is, finally, the hero.
