Pipe Dreams

One of the more provocatively titled movies in recent memory was the eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline. This indie film was released in the U.S. earlier this year, and I was recently able to catch up with it on Hulu.

The movie is the story of eight characters who band together to destroy an oil pipeline in the desert, striking a blow to control climate change. As final preparations take place in the present, we flash back in turn to each of the characters involved, learning their backgrounds, how their activism was activated, and more.

It's an interesting movie in many ways, a foundational one being that it is inspired by a non-fiction book (of the same name, by Andreas Malm) while itself being a fictional narrative. The core of both works is the idea that with the climate situation being as dire as it is, the only moral response is overt eco-terrorism to bring about change as quickly as possible. The film feels like a story about characters who read the book and from there decided to take matters into their own hands.

And it is character that's key here. Each of the eight is nuanced and complex, with their own intriguing histories. The movie paints them all in varying shades of grey, giving them all sympathetic motives while not entirely excusing the fact that they're all essentially terrorists. The use of flashbacks to illuminate character is hardly a new idea, but it nonetheless works very well here. In particular, the sequencing of the flashbacks is quite clever; it usefully keeps some characters more murky until key moments in the "present day" narrative.

Essentially, it's a heist movie -- and if you know me, you know how much a love I heist movie. When the "big day" came, I was quite wrapped up in whether this group would be able to pull off their scheme. Perhaps an absolute top-shelf movie would have made more of questioning whether you want these characters to succeed -- and there was certainly some hand-wringing about that from many reviewers when the movie was first released. Setting that aside, though (if you can), I was engaged.

The movie feels like the very making of it was also something of a guerilla operation, small and inexpensive, with mostly unfamiliar actors. Mostly, that fits with the story. But there are a few jarring elements -- a big one being the overt electronica score by Gavin Brivik. It feels to me like the composer may have watched a lot of Mr. Robot (the only other touchstone for "moral terrorism," I guess), figured "that's what the music should sound like," and then imitated it. But not very well. Without understanding what can make an electronica score sounds good, this one bulldozes conspicuously over most of the film.

Still, I liked the movie overall. I give How to Blow Up a Pipeline a B. Assuming you're OK with not interrogating the morality too deeply, you too might be entertained.