How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Power Heist, by David Bax

“It doesn’t actually teach you how to do it.” So says Logan (Lukas Gage) to Shawn (Marcus Scribner) when the latter picks up a copy of Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline in the movie that same book inspired. Malm’s work of nonfiction argues for sabotage as a necessary tool of climate activism. The film Daniel Goldhaber has directed and cowritten with Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol is a fictional tale of a group of individuals acting on that assertion. The characters do have some printed and handwritten guides and that, along with Goldhaber’s process-oriented filmmaking, means the fictional How to Blow Up a Pipeline probably carries more instruction on how to actually do it then the nonfiction source. But that’s not the point.

Surprisingly, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is not, on its face, a polemic or a work of propaganda. It is, first and foremost, a stellar iteration of that popular and gripping genre, the heist picture. The narrative is structured so that the final phase of the plan gets underway immediately and then we learn about how the group and their mission came together via judiciously spaced and timed flashbacks that never threaten the story’s overall momentum.

Goldhaber, Barer and Sjol deftly employ the most important element of telling a heist story, the careful parceling out of information to the audience. We always know enough about the plan to be engaged but with just enough withheld to maintain our anticipation and guarantee our surprise at the culmination of each set piece. From the building of the necessary explosive devices, to their placement and final implementation at the same time as multiple other moving parts, each forward leap levels up both the stakes and the tension.

Commendations must be reserved here for editor Daniel Garber. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is cut perfectly. Garber also worked with Goldhaber on his previous film, Cam, but has mostly worked in the documentary format. Perhaps those somewhat journalistic instincts are what accounts for Garber’s ability to maintain complete coherence even when describing encroaching chaos.

Now, back to the film’s political point of view. Adroitly, Goldhaber, Barer and Sjol maintain the clarity and purpose of the mission by revealing that each member of this team has their own reasons for engaging in these acts. Were they all to expand upon their overall political philosophies, it’s inevitable that arguments would break out. In fact, at one point, they nearly do. But the singular focus on this one task and belief in its necessity brings them together and keeps them strong.

Lastly–and most importantly–Goldhaber himself refuses to weigh in on the righteousness of what he’s depicting. The magnetism of How to Blow Up a Pipeline lies in its straightforward presentation, its relentless forward momentum and its complete absence of worried moralizing.