It's all right there in the title.
"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" is what it says it is — no metaphors here, that title is as straightforward as they come — and a little bit more, it turns out. Director Daniel Goldhaber fashions this feisty, incendiary political barnburner as a daring heist thriller, "Ocean's Eleven" with an agenda. And it definitely goes boom.
A cast of relatively unknown young actors give "Pipeline," which is based on Swedish author Andreas Malm's 2021 text, a realistic, ground-level feel. The most well known among them is Sasha Lane, star of 2016's "American Honey," and otherwise this group of young activists — or terrorists, or both, an issue with which Goldhaber openly wrestles — could pass for a group of young activists. (Or terrorists. Or both.)
Ariela Barer, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is Xochitl, whose mother dies in an extreme heat wave sweeping through California. Along with her childhood friend Theo (Lane), who has been diagnosed with leukemia from her exposure to her toxic environment, she joins a group of radicals who plan to make a statement by blowing up a pipeline in rural West Texas.
They're joined by others who each have their own reasons for teaming up with the group. Dwayne (Jack Weary) is upset an oil company built a pipeline on land that has been in his family for generations, Michael (Forrest Goodluck) took to making explosives after seeing his mother's pacifism as ineffective, and Shawn (Marcus Scribner) was involved with making documentaries but wanted to get more directly involved in the causes in which he believes. Goldhaber brings this group together and then intermittently doles out their backstories, creating a shifting narrative that is constantly revealing itself in new ways.
The group settles on taking out a section of above-the-ground pipeline, first shutting down the flow of oil, so as not to create an environmental disaster in their wake, thereby negating their entire purpose. Their plan is to slow the flow, hurt the company's bottom line and send a message that people matter over profits.
There are a few wrinkles in their plan, as there always are, and a pair of fringe doofuses (played by Kristine Froseth and Lukas Gage) are more trouble than they're worth. (Among the group of rather level-headed individuals, the pair is the least believable set of characters.)
But mostly "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" cooks, nearly boiling over with tension at several points. Goldhaber knows what he's constructing and why, and the tick-tock nature of the plotting — especially a bit where Dwayne is at a bar seated next to a cop, building his alibi while the plan unfolds — owe more to classic Hollywood than radical politics. That's its strength, and that's why it works. In the end, it's only a movie.
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'HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE'
Grade: B+
Rated: R (for language throughout and some drug use)
Running time: 1:44
How to watch: Now in theaters
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