The American crime thriller series, Breaking Bad, was a television phenomenon. Often considered one of the best, if not THE best television show ever made with its excellent story progression, showcase of a brutally honest world, intentionally hateable yet explored characters, and plenty of quotable lines that still haven’t left the mind of fans, it left its mark on pop culture and arguably helped pave the way for television growing into a more respected space than it was previously. Even though many were satisfied with how the show ended, it wasn’t going to stop obsessed fans from begging for more material based on the meth-making duo, leading to a spin-off show called Better Call Saul which told the backstory of the popular side character, tons of references in other shows and movies that have proven its mark on the media space, and eventually, a Netflix original movie made titled EL Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie in 2019 which told the story of how the younger partner of this iconic crime duo survived after the series concluded. Set immediately after the final events of the show, Jesse Pinkman (played by Aaron Paul) fails to escape the crimes of his past as he is now the main suspect of a massive manhunt. With no one to go to and nowhere to hide, he decides the smartest option is to disappear and start somewhere fresh with the help of Ed Galbraith (played by Robert Forester) who makes a business out of helping people relocate and start new lives. The only issue is that the one who can help him out is also expecting a huge sum of money, and being very desperate, Jesse has to find that amount of money before he’s found. With a show that could turn simple chemistry into a revolutionary TV show, the people behind both this movie and the show clearly have an idea how to draw people in with the simplest things. This movie does contain an identical atmosphere, pace and feel to the show, which means that all the fans will be easily satisfied. It’s not the strongest movie by any means, but with good directing, very clean cinematography and quality acting, it’s worth the watch.

The move in many respects, is exactly what it spells itself out to be, A Breaking Bad Movie. While the El Camino part doesn’t make too much sense (it means ”the way” in Spanish, but its not like that’s ever stated in film), everything to do with this movie just screams Breaking Bad and therefore, does its job at feeling like a director follow-up to its series. Even with the passing years and with the aged actors, everything matches the way it would have been portrayed in the series, it shows the crew haven’t lost their mojo at working with these kind of stories; ones with little action, but with great detail that manage to engross through the strength of the performances, atmosphere and writing. The directing from Vince Gilligan manages to take a two-hour long movie and craft it with a fine line of smoky realism and Hollywood style convenience, but with no annoyance factor or element that makes it feel that much cheaper. Its never too grey that it feels uncomfortable and overly moody, but it clearly knows how to handle something that does require a more serious direction and features this unpleasant atmosphere that the original series captured very effectively. The crew has the ability to make even the littlest elements have some semblance of purpose in the film; it’s that extra level of care that is always appreciated in a film like this and shows why they were able to craft a tv show with that great of care and effort. The film should honestly struggle more as the actual set-up isn’t that spectacular. As movies goes even for a final hurrah to a popular show, its an epilogue in every meaning of the word, and because of this, it doesn’t really add anything drastically important and in the grand scheme of things, didn’t really need to happen. When its entire purpose is to explain the whereabouts of a specific character and only that, it feels kind of shortsighted and when the end results are about as simple as ”he got away”, it doesn’t feel all the fulfilling. Its kind of a shame that for an entire movie based around the closing of a character, it didn’t really do much for them in the long run and doesn’t really offer much that people couldn’t have predicted would have happened anyway. But even so, the handling is good enough that it is able to bypass the shortcomings and create something that, while not amazing, doesn’t hurt anything and will satisfy any fan of the show.

A thankful carry-over from the show to this film is that the acting is still very impressive, and despite most of these actors not really having much screentime outside of these projects, it proves they are still more than capable of carrying themselves in this world. These people have a distinct form of acting that was created in this show that seems to perfectly balance a sense of honesty and cartoony in a believable way. Much like the famous actor Bryan Cranston (who experienced a unique career revitalization from a solo performance alone), they feel like real people but exaggerate and emote more like actors, yet never to a point where it goes too far that it becomes distracting, and instead creates something unique but likeable. Aaron Paul is the star of the film and helped directed the movie in the first place, so it only makes sense a majority is on him and he handles it wonderfully. For someone who has to portray three different interpretations of the same character; hardened and frantic, abused and soft like a beaten animal, and wild and immature as a young man, he does all three beautiful and all feel completely genuine. Its his movie in every sense, in presence and in delivery. Most of the side actors are pretty good too, and there are a lot of returning faces like Jesse Plemons, Krysten Ritter, and Jonathan Banks. Robert Forester gets especially praise for his role as the handler of smuggling people away and considering this was his last film, its a nice final note for him to go out on. Though the villains themselves are pretty standard Breaking Bad style gangster and the actors aren’t exactly great even for such a simple role, for a smaller story and movie, it makes sense there would be no big villain, but it seems they never exceeded the likes of Gus. It is unfortunate that for Jessie’s story to conclude on such a generic, even too positive end, and it does feel like it didn’t really warrant making a movie out of it, but its fine if that’s what they want to do.

With a viewership saved solely for Netflix viewers, it allows the movie to have a much more refined look than what the show had, or any Hollywood movie has for that matter. While the show did feature some large open areas that really extenuate a scene to its highest point of tension, the movie also features moments like that but with a much shinier aesthetic. The movie feels much brighter and more intricate in lighting and framing than the show ever could accomplish. This allows for some fun camera angles and glowing visuals by cinematographer Marshall Adams, that again feel right at home by mirroring the style and actions of the series. The movie in many ways encapsulates everything that fans like about the show and delivers it in a way that feels more updated and fancier, but familiar. The writing sadly struggles to always hit the right notes it is looking for; it’s not that everything that is said is painful to listen to or badly put together, but more rather its just forgettable and nothing special. It does feel like the actors were given improv moments where they could go with whatever they want, which works in some of the more intense moments, but it doesn’t handle humor the best because of it. With that said, its not so massive a downgraded from the previous product that it comes off as distracting, just as a movie since the narrative is pretty basic and therefore easy to write something simple around, it leaves the dialogue a little wishy-washy.

Even though it never truly explains what ‘El Camino’ is, the movie itself is a well-crafted creation with a ton of time and effort put into it that fans will no doubt love to get their hands on. It’s no surprise that Breaking Bad would eventually get a film, but the fact that it didn’t miss the mark on what it built up so long ago, it shows these people still have great talent and have the ability to keep going strong. The story is rather weak but told in a good way with a great director, the actors are very good, the cinematography is nice and clean, and it’s a perfectly fine ending to the show as a whole. The movie is an epilogue to Breaking Bad and doesn’t really do much to escape that title, so for casual viewers or newcomers, it will not be very effective for them, but for fans its perfect. This movie, as well as the show, is much like actual chemistry; heavily famous world-wide and feigns boredom on the outset, but on closer inspection, the potential and creativity behind its concoctions are more than enough of a sign that it’s worth inspecting.

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