How to Blow Up a Pipeline Review

The world is currently in eco-conscious times and more people are voicing and protesting about these issues. How to Blow Up a Pipeline explores the idea of people taking extreme action to save the environment.

A group of disenfranchised young people brought together by Xochiti (Ariela Barer), a college student and activist. They arrive in West Texas with plans to bomb a pipeline and disrupt the American oil industry in an effort to save the environment.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline was inspired by a book by Andreas Malm. He has a thesis that acts of sabotage are required to bring about action to save the climate. The film doesn’t shy away from its political agenda, and it will divide audiences. Climate Sceptics will be hostile to the film, law and order types will not agree with the message, and even people who agree with the message may find How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a film preaching to the choir, or be uneasy with the extreme actions.

The filmmakers behind How to Blow Up a Pipeline wanted a Zoomer rallying cry, cinematic punk, and to try and show different people joining the movement. It was a tough balancing act, especially since it was such a politically charged film.

The film showed the different types of people and why they decided to take up terrorism. Xochiti and Theo (Sasha Lane) grew up in Long Beach and suffered from the effects of pollution, Michael (Forest Goodluck) lived in an Indian Reserve and was hostile to oil workers, and Logan (Lukas Gage) was a rich kid playing activist. They all came from different backgrounds and environments. One of the most striking members was Dwayne (Jake Weary). He was a blue-collar Texan, slightly older than the rest of the group, and had a wife and a young child. He didn’t seem like the type who would partake in environmental activism. However, he suffered at the hands of the oil industry.

It would have been easy to show oil companies and the industry as some sort of Captain Planet villain. They could have been executives laughing in their boardrooms as they think up ways to pollute the planet. Instead, the threat of the oil industry was in the distance. Industrial sites were in the background during the film, and any oil workers in the film were shown to be men just doing their jobs. Michael’s mother, Joanna (Irene Bedard) pointed out it was pointless attacking people just going to work. The characters were fighting against the system since they were battling powerful industrial interests and the basis for our economic system.

Director Daniel Goldhaber did have a titanic task making this film. He had to make a compelling film as well as a political statement. What he came up with was an indie drama as if it was structured like a Quentin Tarantino film. How to Blow Up a Pipeline did look at some heavy subject matter like someone having a terminal illness and a family losing their home. It felt like a film that came from the ‘80s or ‘90s due to the tone, cinematography, and the sync music. The sense of How to Blow Up a Pipeline being like an indie drama extended to the cast since most of them were young and most have appeared in indie cinema and TV.  

The Tarantino comparison comes from the way the film was structured. It had a dual narrative. The first was about the characters arriving in Texas and preparing for the bombing. The second story was the flashbacks to how the oil industry affected the characters and how they got recruited into this cell. It was like Reservoir Dogs which was set during the aftermath of a robbery gone wrong and it flashbacked to the preparations for the robbery.

The flashbacks also played an important role in the film’s tension. There was tension throughout the film since the characters were handling explosives and something could go wrong. When something did go wrong as the characters made their preparations the film would cut to flashbacks to show somebody’s background. It kept audiences on tenterhooks as they waited to find out what happened. It was a superb editing job.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline won’t be for everyone because of its blatant political messaging, yet for most people it was a tense, well-structured film.