El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
Directed by Vince Gilligan
In the wake of his dramatic escape from captivity, Jesse Pinkman must come to terms with his past in order to forge some kind of future.
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12 films that influenced El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
What critics say influenced El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
Co-executive producer and regular episode director Michelle MacLaren once told me that she tried to work homages to Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West , her favorite movie, into every installment that she helmed.
The show often received comparisons to Westerns (which may make some cinephiles blanche), and El Camino steers right into those comparisons; one of its setpieces invokes the Western trope to end all Western tropes, all but demanding to be considered alongside neo-Westerns like Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
The most lurid, bizarrely sensational-looking show of the year is this prequel to Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which shows how Big Nurse Ratched got to be so wicked.
Gilligan refashions Jesse as an old outlaw hero, like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, and it works remarkably well due to Paul’s grip on the character’s history.
Gilligan’s poetically poignant spin on the classic-noir template of Point Blank is certainly enjoyable.
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Plemons turned into one of this decade’s most exciting performers, carrying the most murder-y traits of his lovable Friday Night Lights nerd into Breaking Bad , Fargo , an all-time Black Mirror , and a magnetic comic performance (robbed of an Oscar, robbed!!!) in Game Night .
He will have to evade the cops and some new enemies to make it there, but “El Camino” isn’t exactly a thriller (despite a wonderful “High Noon” showdown).
Rewatch the 2008 premiere, see the inaugural Jesse Pinkman: haircut like some boy band’s token skatepunk, fashion sense out of Malibu’s Most Wanted , Paul’s kindergarten eyes aging his twentysomething meth cook teenward.
As the climax nears, and Jesse’s own chase for freedom makes him collide with one last loose end for revenge, El Camino morphs into the kind of neo-Western we’ve come to appreciate in films like No Country for Old Men and Hell or High Water .
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But there’s also been a weird back and forth between the two mediums as well, including TV shows based on movies, movies based on TV shows and even the occasional extension of a series into a film sequel, with shows like “Star Trek,” “Firefly,” “Sex and the City,” “The X-Files” and “Veronica Mars” all spawning cinematic offshoots after their finales.
But there’s also been a weird back and forth between the two mediums as well, including TV shows based on movies, movies based on TV shows and even the occasional extension of a series into a film sequel, with shows like “Star Trek,” “Firefly,” “Sex and the City,” “The X-Files” and “Veronica Mars” all spawning cinematic offshoots after their finales.