Later on, we meet Michael , who picks a fight with an oil worker before returning home to lecture his mother about the futility of her conservationist efforts. In both cases, the message is clear: only through violence and vandalism can meaningful change be achieved.
Daniel Goldhaber, who directed the film and co-wrote the script, intended to make a heist movie, figuring that if he could make the characters seem cool, it would “shift the cultural narrative around climate tactics,” and give people “hope” that something can be done. That something, of course, being terrorism.Article content
I’ve never seen heist movies as ringing endorsements of bank robbery or Robin Hood-style wealth redistribution, but I guess art really is in the eye of the beholder. At the very least, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” offers a unique take on the genre by forgoing the classic trope of a ringleader setting out to find accomplices that have the unique skills necessary to pull off a given job.
The audience is introduced to the characters through flashbacks detailing how each one has been aggrieved by the oil industry or the effects of climate change and how they managed to find each other. The majority of the film’s tension comes not from disagreements among the characters or the threat of getting caught, but from watching this group of amateur saboteurs almost blow themselves up time and again.