El Camino (2019, Vince Gilligan) (Patreon)

59/100

Instructive about the distinction between movies and TV, as it looks quite cinematic (just as the show generally did) but plays like a bloated mid-season episode, focused as it is on the various difficulties involved in completing a single task. First hour or so, during which Jesse searches for Todd's cash cache, represents Gilligan at his best, juggling knife-edge tension, goofy humor (Todd singing along with "Sharing the Night Together" rivals Gale's karaoke rendition of "Major Tom"—I might actually give this the edge, because the passing trucker declining Todd's request for a horn toot nearly killed me), Jesse's PTSD, and the sort of ultimately productive confusion that I always treasure. For example, I couldn't figure out how the one cop instantly knew that his partner was speaking to him under duress, and was duly gratified/embarrassed (the latter because it seems very "duh" in hindsight) when the answer arrived. Too much blatant contrivance for my taste in the back half, though. 'Twas great to see Forster again (especially under the sad circumstances), but I don't buy that this dude is such a stickler for the terms of a deal that he'd risk an easy $250K payday—half of which he believes he's already owed—over a lousy $1800. (To put that in perspective, it's as if someone contracted to pay you $100 for your services and you decided that $99.28 just ain't gonna cut it. Exact same percentage.) That's strictly a means of engineering an old-school Western gunfight that itself feels too phony by half, especially culminating as it does in a truly cringeworthy bit of fan service ("Dude, you're on fire"). Aaron Paul does superb work throughout—our brief reminder of the blithe doofus Jesse used to be genuinely startles; Paul slips back into that mode as if he'd never doused it in gasoline and set it on fire—but by the time Walt shows up for his cameo, El Camino has fully metamorphosed from superfluous but gripping epilogue to mere nostalgic gratification. Really hoping the same fate doesn't ultimately befall Better Call Saul on the prologue end.