The Exhilarating How to Blow up a Pipeline Is a Guaranteed Blast
It’s been a little over a year since Andreas Malm’s 2021 book How to Blow Up a Pipeline saw its argument for more climate activism morph into an argument for different climate activism. Money isn’t cutting it. Protests aren’t either. Maybe sabotage will. Its vitality flows like an antidote to the poisonous nihilism surrounding the climate crisis from progressives; its fiery points threaten the crisp piles of cash collected by conservatives. Filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber’s air-punching, chair-clenching, heart-in-mouth adaptation is the best way to convert people to its cause—whether they’re dark green environmentalists or gas-guzzling Senate Republicans. Adapting a nonfiction treatise on the limits of nonviolent protest into a specific, heist-like fiction is a brilliant move by Goldhaber and his co-writers Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol. In its execution of a carefully crafted plan, held together by explosive and interpersonal chemistry, it thrusts us into its thrilling visualized philosophy. How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn’t naïve enough to rely on optimism, opting instead to radicalize competence.
Think of How to Blow Up a Pipeline like a word problem. The most exciting word problem you can imagine, where the two trains leaving the station collide in an explosive snarl of steel, your onboard loved ones saved only by quick thinking and teamwork. How to Blow Up a Pipeline contextualizes its concepts into actions so we can better understand, internalize and identify with them. There’s not a moment lost getting us there. Goldhaber’s sophomore film after 2018’s horror CAM, the filmmaker again plays with lived experience, this time using a different, breakneck genre to enhance his film’s point of view. His debut explored the vulnerabilities inherent to modern life in a digital sphere; his follow-up expands these anxieties to our globe’s biggest threat.
Malm’s chapters (”Learning from Past Struggles,” “Breaking the Spell” and “Fighting Despair”) are elegantly transposed, their high-level arguments humanized into character and conversation. The ensemble—led by student protestors Xochitl (Barer) and Shawn (Marcus Scribner), whose plan organically gathers together surly Native bomb-builder Michael (Forrest Goodluck), horny crustpunk couple Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage), terminally ill Theo (Sasha Lane) and her reluctant girlfriend Alisha (Jayme Lawson), and disillusioned landowner Dwayne (Jake Weary)—is colorfully drawn and filled out through savvy, well-cut flashbacks. Everyone has their reasons, and we have everyone’s back.
It’s so evenly handled that it’s impossible to praise one star without the others; Barer’s unwavering gaze supplements Scribner’s weight-shifting unease, which allows Froseth and Gage’s comic relief to crack us up and Goodluck’s endearing glower to bring us back down. Meanwhile, Lane and Lawson’s disarmingly raw intimacy supplements Weary’s distance—it’s finely tuned character work, with everyone rising to the occasion. The filmmaking throws back to the pacing and style of ‘70s thrillers (accordingly scored by Gavin Brivik’s too-cool synth riffs), but its excellent cast radiates as much charm as Ocean’s Eleven and as much danger as The Dirty Dozen.