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Rating: CONTAINS SPOILERS
“Yeah, Bitch! Magnets!”
“What up, biatch? Leave it at the tone…”
Anyone who ended up here after watching the saga of Walter White already knows these are phrases from Jesse Pinkman.
Anyone else who ended up here without ever having seen either Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, consider yourself sick, turn off the phone, isolate yourself from the world and catch up with the TV series.
Then come back here.
In fact, El Camino is undoubtedly, without a shadow of a doubt, the weakest chapter in the saga set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.
I repeat: catch up on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
In any case, if you don't want to listen to me, the good Vince Gilligan also thought about you, and a narrative stratagem will give you all the necessary information to follow the story.
Yes, turn off the lights and let the show begin.
Past: Two men, one young and one old, are by a river. They are about to earn a lot of money, a mountain of money, and they fantasize about projects for the near future.
The young one is named Jesse Pinkman, the old one Mike Ehrmantraut.
“You know he won't be happy about it?”
“No, I guess not. Only you can decide what's best for you, Jesse. Not him, not even me.”
Yes, they are talking about Walter White, aka Heisenberg, the dark meth producer from New Mexico.
“I'm out.”
“What will you do with all that money?”
“The same as I did with the other money.”
“And you, early retiree? Will you live the dream life?”
“I don't know if I should stay in town.”
“That's already something.”
“Nothing holds me here. Where would you want to go if you were me?”
“It doesn't matter. I'm not you.”
“Come on, tell me. If you were my age... Come on, play along. Make conversation.”
“To Alaska...”
“Really?”
“Yeah, if I were your age and wanted a fresh start... Alaska, up there it's the last frontier, you can be whoever you want.”
“From scratch.”
“It could be.”
“Fix things up...”
“No, that's the only thing you can never do...”
Cut.
Present.
Jesse's face is covered with a thick beard, crossed by scars. His hair covers his forehead. He is driving a car and emits desperate cries of liberation. He is running away.
Evidently, some setbacks have kept Jesse away from Alaska and more obstacles await him.
The film tells this: Jesse's difficult escape from captivity in New Mexico to freedom in Alaska.
Vince Gilligan develops the plot on two temporal planes: the present and the past, seen through the protagonist's memories, nightmares, lapses. New images, set in a past that many viewers know, others do not.
Jesse is not Walter White, nor Gus Fring, nor Saul Goodman, no thirst for revenge guides his actions.
Indeed, the protagonist has suffered traumas that have affected his psyche, weakened his protective shell, and made him harmless, docile, inoffensive, meek, incapable of any form of violence.
The story is, therefore, the only one in the saga that rejects revenge.
Until, in need of money, Jesse accepts, seeks, and faces a wild west duel and makes it his own with icy coldness.
"So, suddenly, for no reason," Jesse becomes Clint Eastwood.
All at once, the character's credibility falls, the thread of the story breaks, and the tension wanes.
Not that up until that point in the film everything had been in place. The light characters were missing. Saul Goodman didn't appear, and Jesse's two goofy friends, Skinny Pete and Badger, had become sad and anguished: they weren't like that in the series! Everything has become dark and, even worse, serious.
Dear Vince, well-done works are recognized by the care of the secondary characters. Here only the villain is saved, the icy, alienated, serial killer, Todd Alquist, played by the talented Jesse Plemons.
But the rest? It's not working at all, weak and poorly characterized characters, music that doesn't have that ironic strength that impresses them indelibly in the viewer's ears.
And then... Breaking Bad told a story from which all the protagonists emerged defeated. This chapter wants to open a glimmer for the young man in the story, not for the law, nor for the criminals, but for the only one who had within him the germ of a logic of reality that was different. In short, I really believed that there was no need for all this, that this film was not necessary, and Vince Gilligan, in making it, did nothing to make me change my mind. So, El Camino is not needed.
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