As of Friday at 12:01 a.m. PT, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie has officially been released on Netflix. For fans who want a bigger experience, the film will also be released at select movie theaters on Friday; visit ElCaminoBreakingBadMovie.com to see showtimes near you. It appears many theaters that are showing the movie will have their first screenings early in the evening on Friday, and will continue to show El Camino over the weekend, with some showing it into next week as well.
Teasers and promotions for the follow-up to the groundbreaking AMC series have stayed pretty tight-lipped leading up to its release, although it did show Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) on the run in an El Camino car.
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Spoilers for Breaking Bad lie ahead, although there are no real spoilers for El Camino.
With Jesse having outlived his mentor Walter White (Bryan Cranston), El Camino provides the closure that Jesse didn’t quite get at the end of the original show, which ended with Walt lying dead on the floor of a meth lab. The film also gives Paul a chance to prove that Jesse is capable of carrying a story in the Breaking Bad world as the solo protagonist.
El Camino picks up immediately where the original series left — with Jesse driving away from the wrecked Nazi compound, going step by step through the myriad problems he has to solve in his attempt to get out of Albuquerque alive. But he doesn’t do it alone, which gives Breaking Bad fans the chance to catch up with beloved characters from the original series. Rolling Stone‘s Alan Sepinwall, who gave the film four out of five stars, writes that Jesse’s travels “manage to bring in a number of welcome old faces, starting with his pal Skinny Pete (Charles Baker), who very much rises to this strange occasion.”
Sepinwall describes Jesse as “a more seasoned lawbreaker than when he was going by Cap’n Cook and putting chili powder in his meth,” although he’s not quite on White’s criminal genius level.
Fans can expect El Camino to fill a few narrative and emotional blanks about periods of Breaking Bad where Jesse’s story is put on the back burner thanks to Walt’s antics, allowing viewers to get inside his head more than ever.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is in theaters now and available to stream on Netflix. What did you think about El Camino? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Photo credit: Netflix
