Xochitl (Ariela Barer), an environmental activist who grew up in the shadow of an oil refinery, is tired of the small-step demonstrations mounted by her college and wants to make a bold statement against the fossil fuel industry.  Michael (Forrest Goodluck) is an amateur pyrotechnician who runs a DIY explosives community online.  Shawn (Marcus Scribner) is a videographer working on a documentary about how the oil industry has affected everyday people like Dwayne (Jake Weary) who was forced from his family home when the land was needed for a new pipeline.  Together, they will assemble a small team of activists to send a loud message to the oil industry by blowing up two sections of a pipeline in a Texas oil field. 

Daniel Goldhaber directs the ecological heist/thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline from a script he co-wrote with Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol based on Andreas Malm’s novel which seeks to legitimize sabotage as a valid form of climate activism.  The film made its rounds at various festivals before a limited theatrical release from Neon and stirred up quite a bit of buzz and controversy from the title alone.  Running a fairly lean 104 minutes, the film splits its time between the heist and flashbacks of the various team members all seeking to show how climate change affects us all and in vastly different ways. 

Audiences are welcomed into the ensemble piece through Xochitl, not just as one of the first characters we see but also as the subject of the first flashback with helps flesh out the otherwise straightforward narrative.  She possesses a frustration with the system and the knowledge that following the standard order of things is just a way for corporations to insulate themselves from the fury of the consumer.  Her dedication to the cause, and the origin of the idea attributed to her, helps ease some of the more cautious-minded members of the audience to join her on this journey as she states her case in bits and pieces over time in order to win over the other members of her team.  Barer brings a tangible passion to the screen, and as her story develops in tandem with her childhood friend, Theo (Sasha Lane), the script begins to take on additional connective layers so that this is not just eight people bound by a single cause and nothing else.  This puzzle-piece structure helps to add some flavor to the tension as personalities and allegiances begin to combat each other and pads the runtime from what could otherwise have been a short film. The key to its success, though, is that none of the flashbacks feel like filler material as it spares us from long introductory speeches by the characters on their dusty drive through the desert.   

When the film is grappling with these personal relationships, it is at its most interesting as it is taking a massive global crisis and filtering it down to how it affects a select few.  This allows the problem to be addressed more reasonably.  What difference can eight people out of 7.9 billion people actually make?  Not much.  But what difference do eight people working towards a singular goal – to blow up a pipeline – make?  All of a sudden, the stakes become much more manageable while never losing importance.  These flashbacks and digressions also help inform how this team got pushed to their wit’s end to even consider blowing up a pipeline.  In Theo’s flashback, we learn that she and Xoctial would play in the rain as children, but because of their proximity to the oil refinery, the chemicals in the atmosphere would burn their skin as the rain came down leaving behind red marks.  More recently, Theo has been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.  Xotial, and as the narrative unfolds, Theo, views this act of sabotage as a way of calling out the lives which the oil companies have stolen, and they posit that should measures take a turn for the worst, what does she have left to live for?  Her diagnosis is terminal and this, to them, is a fitting act of revenge.  Needless to say, this mindset does not sit well with her partner, Alisha (Jayme Lawson), who supports Theo through this but confronts Xotial saying that while Theo may be dying, she would be leaving her behind. Life is still worth living, but she agrees that the destruction of the environment is quickly leaving little life left for all of us.   

Some of the flashbacks work better than others. Dwayne feels a little underdeveloped but adds a very nice bit of insight into the film as not only the oldest of the crew but from a much more rural background, too.  Logan (Lukas Gage) and Rowan (Kristine Froseth) do well, though their narrative gets a little twisted in the later throws, further compounded by their grating, caricature-like personalities.  The real standout of the ensemble, however, goes to Goodluck, a brutally apathetic youth from North Dakota who has found the small reservation in which his family has been pushed, shrunk down even more by the greed of the oil industry. Further, the industry does not offer employment to the indigenous community which creates a cycle of poverty that can never be escaped from by complacency.  Like Xochitl, his role can be incredibly prickly at times, but unlike her, he remains very standoffish throughout the film.  He does not get any major speech to find redemption, his flashback is full of violence, and his gruff mutterings always have a sense of general agitation about them.  He is able to weird his back-against-the-wall attitude as not only a strong defense of his own emotions, but he allows us to really see the amount of damage done to an entire generation by the oil industry. 

What the script also does for him is that it lets audiences use him as an outlet for our own frustration and someone we can rally around with our own anger about the condition of the environment that we might otherwise be afraid to speak out about singularly.  It is understandable outrage when the companies are insulated from any global tragedy or even a nuisance weather event as they can raise prices by leaps and bounds overnight. News about a massive oil spill in the middle of the ocean got out? No worries, the consumers are held hostage with nowhere else to get their fuel and will make up for the value of the lost product whether they like it or not. While the hearts of their marketing teams may go out to the heaps of dead wildlife their accident created, or the war-torn nations on Twitter, in the board rooms they are happily reporting yet another quarter of record profits. To make matters worse, the individual has relatively few options in a nation with crumbling public transit infrastructure; continue to line the pockets of the oil industry oligarchs or invest in an EV which most likely has contributed to massive, invasive mining and stripping of foreign lands and exploiting their people for lithium among other metals and materials necessary for the various components of the batteries.  Putting the price tag aside on these vehicles, which is already enough sticker shock to turn most interested customers away, when the CEO of the most popular electric car brand is also the same CEO who plows ahead with rocket launches at his other company, after allegations of cutting corners from his technicians and engineers, his rocket failed to launch, destroying acres of nearby vegetation with fire, catapulting debris for miles, ravaging the land and littering the Gulf of Mexico and the delicate ecosystem around it, it is not hard to feel like the deck is stacked against us.  The rampant nature of the industry and the preference for profit over sustainability shown by our government has created an entire generation where the only viable retirement option is an environmental disaster and systemic collapse on a global scale.  It is no wonder we are angry. It is no wonder we feel unheard as the governing bodies in place grow older and older refusing to relinquish power while pushing through a number of short-sighted laws to secure their own wealth and appease their corporate donors, and leaving the younger generation with the impossible task of cleaning up the mess they left behind.  

The film from its very title takes an antagonistic stance, but through this ensemble, it shows audiences that this act is, as Xochitl puts it, an act of self-defense.  Care is taken to ensure that the oil will not spill out, further contaminating the land and water, but that it will just be the pipes that are broken apart.  With a smart bit of foresight, one night they all sit and discuss how their activism will be labeled terrorism, and sure enough, a certain embattled sensationalist news network has called it exactly that.  This is not a “how to” manual, but by labeling it as a work of terrorist propaganda, it is a quick way to shut down and invalidate any discussion. The fact that the opportunities for discussion have been tabled and ignored for years is the whole reason we have gotten to the point where blowing up a pipeline is the only way to get people to listen.   

The film ends with a small montage of the characters after the operation.  It is not the most hopeful note, and maybe that is a good thing to keep audiences feeling uncomfortable about it. There is still work to be done; there may still be time left to curb our reliance on fossil fuels. Goldhaber delivers a poppy thriller with a blunt, necessary message, and like the characters, he is similarly strong-willed toward the cause. At the end of the day, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is still just a film and it will not change much on its own, but with a shocking title and an incredibly accessible structure, it can hopefully help get the conversation started around climate change and the oil industry so that the transition to something more sustainable and healthy for the Earth and the people that live on it does not have to be brought on by violence, but through diplomatic change. It is, unfortunately, a bit of a pipe dream as profits continue to be preferred over people, and revolution seldom comes cleanly and quietly.