HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE (2022) is about a group of young people who have determined, quite reasonably, that the only voice they really have in stopping an oil company from poisoning their communities and exacerbating climate change is if they figure out how to sabotage their infrastructure enough to disrupt their business and make it less profitable. So that’s what they’re ready to do. They all rendezvous at a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, West Texas, some meeting for the first time, but they all know the plan, and they get to it.

I was a little thrown off by the opening, because it didn’t seem like the raw, authentic approach I had pictured. The filmatism is trying to make these twentysomethings rigging the security cameras at their maid jobs look like HACKERS meets OCEAN’S ELEVEN. And I was not buying this disparate team we see coming together – two messy punk rock kids (Kristine Froseth [THE ASSISTANT] and Lukas Gage [the villain the younger bouncer from the ROAD HOUSE remake]), one rugged camo-hat-wearing redneck (Jake Weary, MESSAGE FROM THE KING), etc. – how would they have gotten together? But it’s immediately thrilling with its blunt sense of purpose, its 16mm grain (cinematographer: Tehillah De Castro) and its un-ostentatious score by Gavin Brivik (The Pitt), with synths looping over beats banged out on oil drums. And though there will be scenes here and there that don’t ring true (like a cartoonish documentary director [Sam Quinn, JANE GOT A GUN] who says all the worst things to interview subjects in his one scene) it turns out to mostly play closer to “this must be what it would really be like” than just fun Hollywood bullshit.

Also, that question I had about how this group would even come together is answered through a novelistic structure – most of the characters get to have a chapter where it jumps back to show how and why they ended up here. The punk kids are dedicated activists who have done smaller actions before, the rest are people with personal grudges: a mother killed by a freak heat wave, a rare form of leukemia from growing up next to a refinery, family land stolen through eminent domain. Michael (Forrest Goodluck, THE REVENANT, BLOOD QUANTUM)’s story is a little much at first because we only see him furious about oil wells on his North Dakota reservation, we even see him going out on an oil field to scream in anguish like Furiosa when she finds out the Green Place is gone, but we don’t see any evidence of other interests, even when his mom (Irene Bedard, voice of POCAHONTAS) tries to chill him out. Well, I guess he has the related interest of bomb-making. That is a huge passion for him.

So that does make him a stand out character, this intense guy who barely bothers with social interaction, but they all recognize where he’s coming from and that he’s the most crucial member of the team, the guy in the shed carefully preparing the chemical-filled barrel that will be united with the detonator on scene. Not much of a plan without a guy who can do that, and understandable why he wouldn’t be in a mood to joke around. So when he does make brief attempts at human connection it’s a big deal.

Sasha Lane (TWISTERS) plays the much more relatable Theo. She’s an interesting actress, I should see that movie AMERICAN HONEY I guess. She has such a natural feel on screen, she seems like she’s just playing herself even when the character is a psychic who was kidnapped by fairies when she was a baby and now is friends with HELLBOY. Here she seems like she’s your friend who you have to accept only has a few months to live and feels this is what she needs to do with them. What can you say, “It’s not worth it”? Her girlfriend Alisha (Jayme Lawson, a.k.a. Gotham City mayor Bella Reál in THE BATMAN and The Penguin) decides well, then I’m going with you.

Xochitl (Ariela Barer, voice of “Super Martian Robot Girl,” Yo Gabba Gabba!) grew up in Long Beach with Theo and is the instigator of this whole plot. We see her in college working with activist groups but becoming more and more frustrated that even in a best case scenario their work would just divest a small amount of money away from fossil fuels, not change the trajectory of rapidly approaching existential catastrophe. But most people get scared when she talks about escalation. The movie is credited as an adaptation of the 2021 book of the same name by Andreas Malm, which was actually a non-fiction book basically arguing Xochitl’s point of view that property destruction is valid as self defense and necessary at this point.

We can imagine many normal Hollywood ways for this story to go. There’s the version where everybody’s all in but one character, maybe Theo, slowly starts to realize the true ramifications of what they’re doing and decides to stop them. Or the version where one person, maybe Michael, maybe someone more surprising like nice guy filmmaker Shawn (Marcus Scribner, voice of “Bow” on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), is more militant than the others and secretly has larger plans the others aren’t on board for, or is willing to go through with it after something goes wrong and innocent workers are going to be harmed, so Xochitl realizes she has to stop him. Or there’s the POINT BREAK approach where one of them is an undercover agent and grows sympathetic to the people and the cause but has to betray them in the end because it’s the right thing to do. Or maybe one where everyone is well intentioned and goes through with it but innocent people get killed, someone gets blown up by accident, they all get shot by cops except one who tries to run and gets caught and maybe they still think it was worth it but it ends on a crazy look in their eyes as they say it.

This is none of those. This is the one you wouldn’t expect where we just watch them do it and hope they can get away with it. Yes, there’s lots of suspense about if everyone can be trusted, if they can get the bombs in place safely, if they will be spotted, all the exciting thriller stuff. But any hesitations about “is this the right thing to do?” are brought up early on in the flashbacks and then we’re done with that. In a way it’s the same as watching a heist movie. In that case it’s criminals carrying guns, doing something very illegal, but we root for them. We understand their motivations within the movie but we wouldn’t support it in real life and that’s okay because we know it’s not real life, it’s a fantasy.

This feels more dangerous, because we, or at least I, would support it in real life. They all laugh that they will be called terrorists, and disagree about whether or not they actually are. But they have seen policy and activism fail to slow this down, they know that time is running out (in some ways already has run out), and they can’t bear not trying to take action. At least their plan seems like it could do more than the one in FIRST REFORMED. Does it make you think? Yeah, about things you’ve already thought about, but don’t really want to. About someone should do something.

Of course, when it comes down to it it’s as much of a fantasy as the heist movie, because I’m sure as fuck not gonna learn how to make bombs, not gonna sneak onto property and plant them, I don’t have that in me. And I’m not confident this would really create enough of a snowballing effect to slow them down much. (Also I question whether their method for preventing spillage is legit or magical thinking like imploding Aegis 1 in ON DEADLY GROUND.) But shit, man, I can’t knock these kids for trying. I can only respect it. What the fuck am I doing? Just taking the bus and eating veggie burgers. That probly won’t be enough.

I’m not an anarchist or a vigilante. I want the system to work, and I want people to work within it. I have during various elections been harangued by lefter-than-thou types online for accepting the proposition that we should vote for the lesser-of-two-evils. And I haven’t entirely given up on the dream of good Democrats one day controlling the party and doing a better job of doing good things through laws and shit. Though it seems less and less likely.

But I’m not stupid. It’s pretty fuckin clear these days that the system won’t save us. That ship had sailed even before Trump had goons in masks snatch the system off the street and send it without charges to a torture prison in El Salvador. He’s just one of many examples of white collar criminals and corrupt politicians who have not been held accountable, they’ve only gained more and more power, gotten away with more. Our lives are controlled, our culture is lessened, our money is stolen and our earth is ravaged by powerful corporations that don’t even give us much in the way of products or services because their main purpose is perpetual growth and stock manipulation. Fascist Silicon Valley snake oil salesmen poison our environment and our technology with A.I. bullshit and our politics with insane nazi brain rot. I have never believed in violence, but I have to face the fact that if some of those guys got Mangione-d or Saddam-ed it could save millions of lives and I would not feel a single minor pang of guilt for celebrating their demise. I don’t want to feel that way but what other option is left? They’ve removed even the illusion of any other route for change.

All that being said, the reason I think HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE is a great movie is that it forces you to think about that stuff but it works so well as a compelling crime/suspense thriller and procedural that entertainment feels like it could be the primary objective. I don’t think you could come out of it feeling like it was homework or a bunch of preaching. It’s pretty ingenious in the way it front-loads the Big Ideas™ while it’s lighting the fuse and then most of the movie you’re trying to hold onto the back of the rocket. No matter how you answer the questions it brings up you’ll probly find yourself as a viewer at least somewhat wanting to see them pull it off, just like the bank robbers.

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE is directed by Daniel Goldhaber and written by star Ariela Barer & Jordan Sjol & Goldhaber. It’s the director’s second movie, after the much-discussed-at-the-time Blumhouse/Netflix movie CAM (2018). Once again, I guess I gotta see that.

Goldhaber’s next movie is gonna be FACES OF DEATH, which has a plot about a content moderator coming across videos of murders re-enacted from movies, so I guess it’s “a remake of the 1978 film of the same name” in kinda the same way HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE is an adaptation of the book. You might imagine if this guy is going from Anarchist’s Cookbook material to the Gorgon Video library he must be a real edgelord, but this one at least is the opposite. It’s the work of someone who really cares.