How To Blow Up a Pipeline (15)
Directed by Daniel Goldhaber 
★★★★

“ANYTIME anyone has challenged authority they’ve called it terrorism … if the American empire calls us terrorists then we’re doing something right” insists a group of 20-something environmental activists in this explosive part heist part eco-thriller which explores the climate crisis. 

The film, directed by Daniel Goldhaber, follows eight members of a collective on their quest to blow up a section of an oil pipeline in West Texas as they aim to sock it to the man aka corporate America, and hit him where it hurts. “We have to show how vulnerable the oil industry is by hitting something big” claims Xochitl (Ariela Barer) who devised the plan with her friend Shawn (Marcus Scribner). The idea is to destroy property and fossil fuel infrastructure and not people.

Co-written by Goldhaber, Barer and Jordan Sjol, the film is based on Andreas Malm’s manifesto book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which apparently does not outline how to build a bomb unlike the film itself. This showcases characters from different backgrounds and varied communities affected by climate change, and places Malm’s ideas in a contemporary American social context. 

It intercuts the operation of sabotaging the pipeline with flashbacks of how each character was radicalised, giving you a more informed and rounded picture and context of their actions in the present day. So Theo (Sasha Lane from American Honey), who has an advanced rare form of leukaemia having lived near oil refineries all her life, tells her girlfriend (Jayme Lawson) “I have to go out with one big fuck you to the people who did this to me.” And frankly, who can blame her. 

Shot on 16mm that provides a gritty and textured look to the film, it feels like a drama that is unfolding in the present. It is an extremely tense race-against-time eco-drama with standout performances from its ensemble cast in whom you become invested. Will they succeed or fail? The film draws you into empathy with their actions. 

Although it does examine the morality of such extreme measures and what it takes to bring about a change of hearts and minds, it paints a heartbreaking portrait of a generation who feel they have no future and know that radical steps must be taken to prevent a climate disaster. 

This is a thought-provoking call to revolutionary arms in the cause of preserving the planet. 

Out in cinemas today