Revisiting Deadwood in a triumphant movie that serves as the series finale the show never got
The TV reunion movie was thought to be a thing of the past, but perhaps no longer! This year brought us two of them, albeit in big budget, high production value fashion, and with much better screenplays. Also, we’re calling them just plain movies now (although what they both really were were epilogues to their original series endings). Luckily, they are both well worth your time, assuming of course you were a viewer of the shows in the first place. As a fan of both shows, I’m happy to say I was more than satisfied with these films.
EL CAMINO
One last scam for Jesse as he flees for his life
In the series finale of Breaking Bad, the last we saw of Jesse PInkman was him driving off into the night from where Season 5’s Neo-Nazi villains had kept him hostage for six months, forcing him to cook meth for them while locked to a cage by chain. Whether or not you were satisfied with that ending, with simply seeing Jesse escape after triumphantly killing the evil Todd (Jesse Plemons) is likely to dictate whether you enjoy or feel this new movie about his immediate whereabouts in the aftermath of the shootout, is necessary at all. I personally remember not being totally satisfied with that ending, firmly believing Aaron Paul’s Jesse to be of limited evasive criminal skill to most likely be pulled over and arrested five minutes after breaking out of that place. So I’m happy to say that even if this two hour Breaking Bad epilogue (that’s essentially what it is) may be superfluous in nature, I enjoyed every moment of it and am even happier to report that it’s superbly written, acted and executed. El Camino doesn’t miss a step in feeling of apiece with the show that spawned it. That’s primarily thanks to Vince Gilligan, who wrote and directed this film, in which we follow Jesse in the few days after his escape, meet up with his old pals Dodger and Skinny Pete, experience some flashbacks to his captivity with tormentor Todd (Jesse Plemons looks much older, but it still very effective as the world’s most manipulative psychopath) and serves as the final performance of Robert Forster, who returns as Ed Galbraith, the man who ushers criminals into a type of witness protection program. For a fee of course. The movie needs some conflict with antagonists, so now we get to find out who else Jesse came in contact with during his caged slave cook status, and yes, Bryan Cranston appears for one last flashback moment between Walt and Jesse. Gilligan does a splendid directing job, executing those perfectly agonizing suspense sequences Breaking Bad was known for in its heyday, and Jesse’s ultimate triumph in a western style showdown completes his transformation into mini-criminal kingpin after all, while never losing the long suffering likability that made him such a fan favorite (and really co-lead) of the original series. I can easily imaging revisiting him in another ten years (which would be a full twenty years after BB’s original timeline) for a kind of History of Violence inspired story regarding his new life in Alaska. God speed, Jesse Pinkman. It was quite a ride.
Grade: A-
DEADWOOD: THE MOVIE
Calamity Jane is back as her best self
Deadwood was a highly acclaimed HBO series that aired from 2004-2006 in a brief, beloved run, ending in a cancellation that really cut short a show that had come nowhere near its natural end. Now, thirteen years after its demise, David Milch is given a chance to revisit his old crew and give them the gift of a proper ending that they never received, and the result is a lovely, supremely affectionate coda that respects its characters the way they were and pays tribute to the storylines left so harshly unresolved. You would never expect a show that had been gone for so long to feel so intact in what could have amounted to a reunion movie, but is instead the kind of fitting end that any fan would be happy with. From its opening shot ten years after the last season, with the return of Robin Swigert as Jane, now back from her travels and in full Calamity Jane attire and reputation, set to find her lost love Joanie Stubbs, you know you’re in good hands. We meet up with the various Deadwood citizens, pretty much all of whom come back with their original portrayers (aside from Powers Boothe, who died just two years ago), including the great Ian McShane as Al Swearengen, and Timothy Olyphant as now marshal Seth Bullock. Everyone fits back into their original roles like a glove, particularly McShane and especially Olyphant, who since his time on Deadwood, has matured as an actor through various television roles (including the long running Justified) and returns to this part more confident and assured than he was in the first run. Gerald McRaney is back as the villainous George Hurst, now a senator, and return to Deadwood for the first time since his reign of terror in the final season. Milch does a great job wrapping up this unfinished storyline and putting weight to it by adding some important deaths that don’t feel thrown in for the sake of it, but instead give added resonance to the lives of these characters. There’s a shootout, a wedding, a birth, and a fulfillment of vengeance long sought, all of course with the classic and unique Deadwood dialect intact. It’s such a treat to revisit this world, with its noted language and obvious affection from the actors for this project, and with enough action to justify its setting as a movie, along with payoffs that had been years in the making (Calamity Jane, always a fan favorite, gets her best ever moment in the entire series). Ending the film on one last Swearangen kiss off is the perfect note- what more could you want from this? I got nothing.
Grade: A
