"How to Blow Up a Pipeline"

   ☆☆☆☆ 

It's hard to imagine a genre more difficult to pull off than the environmental thriller. The 1970s brought us the definitive one with The China Syndrome (a movie still as nerve-wracking and engrossing today as in 1979), and since then? I can think of dubious attempts: The Day After Tomorrow or the bizarre '80s experience of John Boorman's The Emerald Forest, but it's not done often.

An environmental movie must, at its heart, preach. Audiences aren't much for preaching, especially these days. And a thriller needs to thrill. Preaching and thrilling are usually not closely related.

All that makes How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a movie whose central plot and its general attitude are sharply conveyed in its in-your-face title, a real surprise. As a thriller, it's a genuine nail-biter. Its central thesis of irreversible damage caused by the oil industry is hardly a new concept, but here it's presented with alarming humanity.

The movie follows eight people in their 20s and 30s as they concoct a scheme to, you guessed it, blow up a pipeline. Each has a reason for being there, and some of the reasons are not at all what you might imagine as they're revealed, slowly, in intermittent flashbacks.

Some of the tension is the old-fashioned sort that would make Hitchcock light up with glee: bombs being built by someone who doesn't necessarily know how to build bombs; synchronized watches that count down the moments to the planned detonation; the inevitability of being caught doing bad deeds on federal land.

Each character is tightly drawn, and the movie has a sly way of withholding key information about some of the perpetrators until the very end, with revelations that cause us to rethink everything we thought we knew. Even a hardcore conservative who argues that these are nothing but punk kids who deserve anything that's coming to them will find it impossible not to be riveted by their exploits.

Though it lacks a certain finesse and sometimes seems a little too relaxed with some of its storytelling, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a real rarity: a thriller that thrills even while it gets its audiences to think.

Viewed April 19, 2023 — AMC Burbank 16

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