How to Blow Up a Pipeline film review: what does ecoterrorism achieve?

A new film looks at why activists take their bold stance against the fossil fuel industry. Those with an opposing view will be unimpressed.

How to Blow up a Pipeline, based on a book by Andreas Malm.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (M)
In cinemas
★★★

“Jesus was a terrorist” notes one of the protagonists of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a film about ecoterrorism carried out by a group of eight activists passionately committed to making a bold statement against the fossil fuel industry.

Based on a book by Andreas Malm, the film is arguably mistitled; it’s not so much about how to blow up a pipeline but why.

Having successfully featured on the film festival circuit since it premiered in Toronto about a year ago, Daniel Goldhaber’s provocative film is clearly aimed at an environmentally active audience, those who believe that not enough is being done to combat increasingly disastrous examples of climate change and that laws must be broken to draw attention to what is seen as an impending global catastrophe.

In the rather clumsy and at times confusing opening scenes we are introduced to a group of eight ecoterrorists who, for different but connected motives, are plotting to blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas. In these scenes the film skips about a lot as it explores the preparations being made by the different members of the group as well as their motives.

They are working class, 20- and 30-somethings, and they come from different parts of the country, but they have been in contact with one another and their plans are well advanced.

These scenes also include their backstories. There is embittered Texas farmer Dwayne (Jake Weary) whose farm, which has been in his family for a century, was forcibly taken from him by the government for the construction of the pipeline. Theo (Sasha Lane) is suffering from terminal leukaemia which she contracted because she grew up in a polluted environment. Her best friend Xochitl (Ariela Barer) is unfailingly supportive of her, while Theo’s lover, Alisha (Jayme Lawson), has her doubts.

Then there’s Michael (Forrest Goodluck), a native American, embittered by the loss of tribal lands; he is skilled at making bombs. Meanwhile lovers Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage) are also on board though Rowan turns out to be playing a double game. The eighth is Shawn (Marcus Scribner) who has been working on an environmental documentary film. These characters are barely sorted out when the plot kicks in with elaborate preparations carried out in an abandoned house.

As the plans devised by the radicals near fruition, the film becomes increasingly suspenseful with the viewer by this time expected to be in full sympathy with the plotters.

Whether you approve of the extreme action taken by the octet will depend on how you approach this modest but well-made film. It raises questions about the extreme measures taken by some environmental activists to make their point, but it goes without saying that those with an opposing view will be unimpressed.

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Sound of Freedon (M)
In cinemas
★★★½

Sound of Freedom has stirred up a good deal of controversy since it opened in US cinemas a few weeks ago.

Heavily promoted by right-wing commentators, and produced by a faith-based company, the film has been touted as an alternative to what is generally perceived as mainstream Hollywood liberalism. But viewed objectively, Sound of Freedom is a very well made, very suspenseful thriller and the main way in which it differs from the Hollywood mainstream is that it is noticeably less violent. Interestingly, it has been an unexpected success in the US.

Near the beginning of Sound of Freedom there is a truly chilling sequence. In a city in Honduras Roberto (Jose Zuniga) accepts an invitation from a persuasive and personable young woman to take his children, 11-year-old Rocio (Cristal Aparicio) and her seven-year-old brother to an audition in an apartment building. It seems legitimate, there are other children there, and Roberto agrees to leave the children for a couple of hours – but when he returns the apartment is deserted – his kids, and all the others, have been kidnapped.

Meanwhile much further north in Calexico, California, Tim Ballard, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, is involved in arresting yet another pedophile. Ballard is portrayed by Jim Caviezel, the actor who nearly a decade ago played the lead in Mel Gibson’s controversial The Passion of the Christ. Ballard is a real character – images of him appear at the end – and he is a dedicated fighter against child pornography and child slavery (a closing title reminds us that there are more people enslaved around the world today than there were when slavery was legal).

Eduardo Verástegui in Sound of Freedom.

Taking time off from his regular job, Ballard joins forces with the scruffy Vampiro – the excellent Bill Camp – who was formerly involved in the drug trade. The men pose as UN doctors trying to stem a cholera outbreak in order to infiltrate the Colombian base of one of the leaders of the child trafficking syndicate.

Director Alejandro Monteverde handles the material with considerable skill; the film ratchets up the suspense very effectively.

Not surprisingly there are religious references – Ballard and his wife, Mira Sorvino, are the God-fearing parents of nine children.

I wondered if the theme of the film was in some way connected with the ludicrous Alt-Right conspiracy theory that all liberals are pedophiles – but the film certainly doesn’t enter into this territory.

Completed five years ago, Sound of Freedom, after a couple of changes of distributor, is finally seeing the light of day. It’s worth a look because it’s a well-made example of a thriller inspired by unspeakable crimes that are being committed the world over.

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Shin Ultraman
In cinemas

★★

In this, the latest in an interminable line of post-Godzilla action films, Japan is threatened by a new clutch of monsters, one of which feeds on electricity, destroying the grid in the process.

The government appoints a team of young techno geeks to face up to this threat and they’re assisted by the formidable Ultraman, a silver humanoid creature with huge, luminous eyes. Like so many of its Hollywood counterparts, Shin Ultraman is light on plot and heavy on special effects.

Director Shinji Higuchi does a routine job with the familiar elements and the film is strictly for ardent fans of this sort of thing.