Last weekend, the first weekend of Earth Month, the incendiary ecoterrorism thriller “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” debuted in theaters after premiering at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Adapted from the book by Andreas Malm, the film, directed by Daniel Goldhaber, is a swift, pulse-pounding thriller about a group of young people who convene in the Texas desert to build and detonate two homemade bombs with the intent of crippling the local oil industry. It is an act of industrial sabotage that they declare is an act self-defense against the fossil-fuel industry that is polluting the air, heating the planet and accelerating climate change.
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is a thrilling piece of entertainment and a nakedly political film — what’s so exciting about it is that the filmmakers, including the talented young cast and the co-writer Jordan Sjol and co-writer/star/producer Ariela Barer actually manage to pull it off, the film that is, adapting a nonfiction book to a narrative that’s incredibly urgent, absorbing and nuanced.
The flashbacks that illustrate how each person ended up on this mission are concise but thorough, a necessary element for a story about ecoterrorism. How can someone who loves the planet be driven to criminal property destruction? It’s a quandary that’s been explored all too infrequently in the media. However, there are some other fascinating films about extreme environmental activists and “ecoterrorists” if “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” piques your interest in other stories of this nature, which are far edgier than your standard Earth Day environmentalism fare.
