El Camino

Big Breaking Bad spoilers below.

Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) is free and on the run. The drug manufacturing neo-nazi's who've kept him prisoner for the last few months have been killed by Walter White and he's been let loose from his captivity. His torment is behind him. Or is it just in front of him when he realises he's the only surviving person involved in what has been uncovered as the largest crystal meth operation in U.S. history.

Breaking Bad finished in 2013. It was magnificent TV. Enthralling, terrifying, traumatic, darkly hilarious. The story of Walter White, a teacher dying of cancer who decided to enter the drug business to ensure his family was taken care of and Jesse Pinkman, the drug dealer he sidled up to to help him break bad. White was the face of the story and the brains behind the operation but Jesse was the heart of the show. A petty criminal who was not prepared for the price being part of heavy duty criminality carves from your soul. Everything went wrong for him from the moment he hooked up with White and everyone he ever loved was ripped away from him. When the show ended Walter's storyline ended in a very satisfactory manner but Jesse was left in a traumatic place. A place where we worried for him. 6 years later we get to see how the remainder of his story plays out and yes indeed it hits the spot. It's as good an ending as we could have hoped for.

Anyone expecting a cinematic take on the Breaking Bad franchise will be disappointed. I was at first tbh, but then realised the slow show like pace and the Albuquerque quirkiness made it all feel like home, like revisiting an old friend you haven't seen in an age. If you can appreciate the fact that it's more of the same then you can just settle in and let it flow over you. A few old faces from the show reappear and in one scene ripe with emotion, one of them stands tall in a way you'd never expect and it's a little moment that would make you want to watch the whole show again just to appreciate that character in a new light. Todd the nazi (Jesse Plemons) turns up in flashback too and reminds us of the quiet evil his character was capable of. A quick glimpse of the tarantula in his apartment will bring you right back to one of the most shocking scenes in the whole series and like most everything else in this film spin off it's done in a subtle way and not crowbarred in.

That's one of the things people will like most about this I suspect, that it isn't just an excuse to revisit a load of familiar faces. There's no Skylar or Walt Jr here, no Saul Goodman, fan service is kept to a minimum, more or less, (listen out for the radio piece in the background) and it means El Camino gets to rise on it's own two feet. Of course it's standing on the shoulders of a giant but more than does it's own thing too. Jesse is a strong enough character to carry a two hour film and the goodwill built towards him from beforehand is carried along by an immensely sympathetic performance from Aaron Paul. Jesse always wore his heart on his sleeve and the pain behind Paul's eyes says more than a 1000 words ever could. He's great in the part.

We get a couple of new characters too. Bad guys of course and as always they are nasty, venal bastards. The climactic moments of this film feature them and turn El Camino back into what Breaking Bad has always been, a modern day western. It might seem a bit cheesy and a bit overwrought but oh man is it satisfying. There's nothing like the vicarious thrill of a bit of well choreographed carnage is there. It's an ending that feels earned too. Jesse wants out. He wants a new future. He puts in the work and we get to see it all with him. The dismantling. The waiting. The evasion. The minutiae of criminal life that most films either avoid or display in a montage. Breaking Bad's most memorable episodes lived by that ideal and El Camino doesn't fuck with the formula, to thrilling and very fulfilling results.

The idea of Vince Gilligan returning to the story he created after 6 years might have seemed like flogging a dead horse but he's pulled it off royally and we get to see a very rewarding end to it all as a result. But hopefully that's it for Jesse. There's no need to come back because that would feel like milking things.

Out now on Netflix.