How To Blow Up A Pipeline

With the climate crisis at the point of no return, a group of environmental activists come up with a daring plan to make their voices heard… by blowing up an oil pipeline.

I love a good heist film.

A disparate group of clever malcontents and daring opportunists, all driven by big dreams and righteous grievances, gathering together and risking it all just to take down a deserving target via their cunning and complex plan? Yes, please. But… then there’s unexpected complications, of course there are, even the best laid schemes of mice and men can run into problems… but wait, are these complications actually all that unexpected? Were these unexpected complications actually part of the plan the whole time? You’ll have to watch and see…

I love that kind of stuff, so I loved this movie.

How to Blow Up A Pipeline is a reimagining of the non-fiction book of the same name by Andreas Malm. A long essay of sorts, it’s mainly about how climate change is an imminent threat to all human life, and that while all of the little things we all do to lessen our negative impact on the environment are important—something we should continue to do—without a full and sincere commitment to the cause on the part of the world’s governments and corporations, and without some major, permanent changes in the way they operate, then it all amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

The book correctly points out that holding onto the idea that we can make things better simply by appealing to the conscience of corporations and governments, to the people who have long made massive profits off the very things we want them to stop doing, is nothing but a fool’s errand. As is trying to get regular people to voluntarily stop using and enjoying all of the shabby and disposable trash-luxuries they eagerly consume. They will simply refuse to stop. Instead, they’ll pour all of their time and energy into fighting you over it. The public response to COVID-19 and the bigoted Authoritarian Christian fascist agenda of the GOP, especially from White America, has shown consistently that, if there’s the smallest chance of being inconvenienced, even a little bit, people will only agree to do literally nothing.

Literally nothing.

So… because of this reality, the book suggests that sabotage and property damage are the only real options left to environmental activists—as long as it’s done without loss of life, of course. Because, simply put, you have to disrupt the system in order to derail the system, and you have to derail the system in order to change the system.

And it’s hard to see the fault with that reasoning.

Reminiscent in style and structure to the thrillers from the 70s and 80s, the film often felt to me like the Michael Mann’s classic Thief meets the William Friedkin’s classic Sorcerer in the way it tells its tense, slow-burning story about a group of people with different skills, and different reasons for being there, coming together for a carefully planned and extremely dangerous mission. But this time, of course, the mission is to blow up that pipeline, all so they can shut down the flow of oil, and for a time at least, derail the system.

Most of all, to show the rest of the world that it can be done.

There’s Xochitl, who lost her mother to the unrelenting temps of the California heatwaves. Shawn, Xochitl’s friend from college with revolutionary dreams. Theo, Xochitl’s best friend, who’s dying of cancer, a gift from the refinery she grew up next to. Alisha, Theo’s girlfriend, a community activist concerned for her dying girlfriend. Dwayne, a West Texan family man who lost his land to the oil companies due to the government’s abuse of eminent domain. Michael, a young Native American with a hatred for the North Dakotan fracking companies and a TikTok about building bombs out of household materials. And finally, there’s the pair of hard-partying young crusty punk lovers, Rowan and Logan, who are in it for kicks.

I don’t want to get too into the ins-and-outs of the story, as with all heist films, the magic is in watching the moments unfold, but this was an all-around well-told story. Tense. Funny. Good twists. Good characters. Good cast. Best of all, it’s fun. It’s just fun. It’s a good ride.

All in all, a really nice surprise.

I also really loved how the film isn’t at all afraid to come down unequivocably on the side of the good guys. Yes, we all love our cars and our plastic doo-dads, and in that, we all shoulder a share of the blame for the current state of shit, but the true bad guys are the Oil Companies. The corporations are the true bad guys. The career politicians maintaining the status quo, squatting in the upper offices, are the true bad guys. The yellow-eyed monsters sitting at the top of the terrible capitalist machines, deliberately and casually wasteful, dressed in filth-stained silks, gorging on cavier and champagne and the suffering the poor, are the true bad guys, just like the legions of sallow-faced, slat-ribbed dogs that beg for their scraps are, all of those idiot dupes and facsist thugs eagerly guarding the interests of the 1%. This is who will destroy everything, and all in the name of their own bloated self-interest. The film makes no excuses for targeting these people and ruining their day. It doesn’t try to humanize them. It doesn’t try to tell “both sides” because those people are the bad guys, they are The Problem, and the people in the film who are blowing up that pipeline…?

They’re the good guys.

So yeah… great film. Loved it. For all of the extra shit I talked about, at its core, it’s just a good time. In the end, if How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn’t my Favorite Movie of the Year this year, then it will definitely be in my Top Five.

Loved it.