How to Blow Up a Pipeline

In How to Blow Up a Pipeline, one of the most suspenseful and taut political thrillers released recently, filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber delivers a satisfying blend of suspense and social commentary. An engrossing eco-thriller that is every bit as rip-roaring as Goldhaber’s debut feature, titled Cam. This time around, Goldhaber fiercely explores the timely issues of climate change, climate activism, and domestic terrorism. A chronicle of a group of young environmental activists planning a hazardous act of terrorism against an oil company that has profited off misery and greed while making humans, the environment, and the planet sick. Gripping from beginning to end, the film finds most of its suspenseful peaks in the third act, even when it yields into some frustrating implausibility that feels too labored. But even with these shortcomings, Goldhaber nonetheless has crafted quite a nail-biter, an intricate plot-driven thriller filled with moral conundrums, ethics, and sharp ideas.

Goldhaber has certainly elevated his skills from his debut since gaining some notoriety with the microbudget stripped-down thriller Cam, and it’s impressive to see his growth while honing his visual flair and taking part in a more expansive canvas this time around. While playing on genre elements with a sharp cast (Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, and Jake Weary), How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an uncompromising adaptation of Andreas Malm’s 2021 controversial non-fiction manifesto that advocates for property damage and dangerous disruption as the only feasible way to combat climate change. Goldhaber plays out these events with added fiction characters and suspenseful dramatizing in just how these actions would play out if implemented.

Courtesy Neon Films

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is precisely the kind of film that could potentially draw just as much controversy as the book. Regardless, it’s a measured thriller with some realist filmmaking, one that instantly pulls you in with its characters, vigilant build-up, narrative structure, and payoff. While co-writing and adapting the screenplay with fellow lead actress Barer and Jordan Sjol, Goldhaber crafts the adapted script with a vigorous energy of impressive camerawork and vibrant editing. Goldhaber instantly immerses us in a vivid world of a group of climate activists with different backgrounds and from different parts of the country conspiring to blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas. The film opens with Xochitl (Barer), one of the activists’ slashing the tires of a parked pickup truck and listing reasons why they are sabotaging the vehicle. Structured like Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Goldhaber uses abrupt flashbacks right at the suspenseful peak of each segment for the audience to get acquainted with each character.

In just under 100 minutes, Goldhaber and the writers do an adequate job of not getting bogged down with too much exposition, and their brief backstories give enough insight on the pivotal moments that led to their activism and insurgence. Some are ideological, but most are deeply personal. For starters, Xochitl’s best friend Theo (Sasha Lane from American Honey) is dying from cancer after being radioactively exposed to it during her childhood, while an Indigenous American from South Dakota named Michael (Forest Goodluck–from The Revenant) is fed up with the same oil company running their pipelines and harming protected Native land. We’re also introduced to Dwayne (Jake Weary), a Texas native who is losing a court battle with an oil company that is building a pipeline on his land. A young couple from Portland named Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage) joins the team, and they are given the task of detonating the bomb the group lined up on the pipeline since they are more seasoned and experienced in their activism.

Courtesy Neon Films 

Goldhaber’s visual style flourishes in the film, and he builds up a pitch-perfect amount of filmmaking realism that always feels nail-biting. While the third act is impressively mounted, some of the staging and writing involving an FBI agent slows the credibility of the story toward an implausible payoff that nearly derails the tautness of the straining climax. Nonetheless, the momentum of the film keeps moving, and Goldhaber’s execution often feels harrowing. Especially during the moment when the oil tank carrying the explosive ends up collapsing on one of the characters, he finds the right amount of tone and shots that bring a visual language to convey what’s at stake.

Like the nonfiction book it’s based on, the film suggests that civilization is at the point of no return in how we care for the planet. While it skims through the conundrums of “right” and “wrong,” it also examines how “right” or “wrong” is disregarded when there are no options left once our corrupt institutions and governments are co-opted by corporate interests that are clearly vested in quarter profits in the moment over having a sustainable planet for the future. Goldhaber fulfills the rationalized ideas of Malm’s book; you are invested in the characters, and you understand what they are fighting for, it’s more personalized than ideological. Just like today, we have many calls for action that end up getting politicized. Here is a fictional world that feels like a call to action. The last resort should always be less mayhem, but what happens when scenarios are past the point of no return?  Regardless of what debates and feelings the film can elicit, they will certainly depend on one’s ideology and ethical rationalizations. Politics and ideology aside, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a very well-made movie. The film is anxiety-inducing, the stakes are real, and it’s about the consequences that arise once all options are limited.

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE opens in theaters Friday, April 6th, it will open in Metro-Detroit Thursday, April 13th.