How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Explosively tense

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and drug use

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.8.23

I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more films like this one, during the next decade.

 

Director Goldhaber’s riveting ecological thriller unfolds with the intensity of a ticking time bomb … which, climate-wise, intentionally echoes the status of Earth these days.

 

Xochitl (Ariela Barer, far left) and four of her colleagues — from left, Alisha (Jayme
Lawson), Theo (Sasha Lane), Shawn (Marcus Scribner) and Dwayne (Jake Weary) —
wait, at a safe distance, for the next phase of their plan to be executed.

Despite sharing its title with Andreas Malm’s 2021 book, the two have nothing in common. Malm’s nonfiction work argues the futility of moral pacifism and expecting change from “the ruling class” — i.e., Big Oil — in favor of more aggressive climate activism in pursuit of environmental justice. (It’s not a “how to” guide akin to William Powell’s notorious 1971 classic, The Anarchist Cookbook.)

Goldhaber, along with co-scripters Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol, instead have fashioned a non-linear nail-biter very much in the mold of Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 crime thriller, Reservoir Dogs. Both films feature eight primary characters; both intercut the suspensefully developing climax with flashbacks providing key details that explain what draws these folks together.

 

The film opens by following Xochitl (Ariela Barer) as she walks along a city street and, unseen, slashes the tires of a parked SUV; she then slides a one-page manifesto beneath the windshield wipers. She becomes the prime mover behind what takes place soon thereafter.

 

Xochitl grew up in Long Beach, Calif., surrounded by polluting refineries and chemical plants. She became radicalized following the recent death of her mother, during a heat wave likely exacerbated by insufficient air conditioning.

 

Xochitl later joins the others — Shawn (Marcus Scribner), Michael (Forrest Goodluck), Theo (Sasha Lane), Alisha (Jayme Lawson), Logan (Lukas Gage), Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Dwayne (Jake Weary) — at a deserted cabin in West Texas. They’re prepared for a brief but intense stay, having brought food, supplies … and all the elements required to make two large cylindrical barrel bombs.

 

Their efforts reflect meticulous — and quite clever — planning, along with a rigorous attention to detail. During this initial phase, they work under the guidance of Michael, who lives on a North Dakota reservation. Infuriated by how a nearby refinery has imperiled his people’s land, he taught himself how to make increasingly sophisticated bombs and triggering devices.

 

We eventually learn that Xochitl and Theo grew up together. As children, they’d gaily play in the rain … and then suffer, hours later, from chemical burns on their exposed skin. Theo recently has been handed a death sentence of leukemia, which prompts a sense of can’t-lose fatalism; it also further fuels Xochitl’s wrath. Theo’s girlfriend Alisha, horrified by their behavior, tries to be the voice of reason … but ultimately succumbs to the developing plan.

 

The Revenant: Grim survival drama

The Revenant (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for strong gory violence, dramatic intensity, sexual assault and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.8.16

Rarely has the rugged American West been portrayed with such grim, unforgiving brutality.

Hollywood seems to view the holiday season as the time for historical sagas of astonishing survival. Unbroken opened on Christmas Day 2014; In the Heart of the Sea occupied movie theaters during much of this past December. To their company we now add The Revenant, based in part on the gruesome event that defined the life — and legend — of early 19th century American fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass.

Seasoned frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) understands that he can't
necessarily trust some of his human companions. He also understands that far more
dangerous creatures roam the wilderness ... and none more volatile than an enraged
mother bear trying to protect her cubs.

This incident, and its aftermath, first hit the big screen in 1971’s Man in the Wilderness, with Richard Harris starring as “Zachary Bass” (the sort of dumb name-shift that made eyes roll, back in the day). Author Michael Punke subsequently employed Glass’ experiences as the backdrop for his fictional 2002 “augmentation” of the trapper’s life, The Revenant; director Alejandro González Iñárritu and co-scripter Mark L. Smith have based this new film on that novel.

While the bloodthirstier elements of Glass’ saga have been heightened here (and in Punke’s novel) for greater melodramatic impact, that isn’t as unreasonable as it might seem. Glass was guilty of exaggerating his exploits during his own lifetime, so we really aren’t able to separate fact from fancy ... except with respect to the seminal incident.

As the film begins, Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is guiding a fur-trapping expedition led by Capt. Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), commander of the trading outpost Fort Kiowa, located on the Missouri River in South Dakota. The group is ambushed by an Arikara war party — once-peaceful Native Americans who, at this point in their history, are thoroughly fed up with having been repeatedly displaced by white settlers — that decimates Henry’s company.

The fleeing survivors regroup, with Henry accepting Glass’ suggestion of the safest — but hardest — route back to the fort. This decision doesn’t sit well with the outspoken John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), mostly because he neither likes nor trusts Glass. The latter doesn’t regard Fitzgerald as worthy of concern, which of course enrages our de facto villain even further.

Fitzgerald also is a vicious racist who despises the presence of Glass’ half-Native teenage son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). Although father and son are devoted to each other, the boy is withdrawn and fearful: forever traumatized by a childhood event that claimed his mother’s life (and which we experience, in brief chunks, via flashback).

The remaining trappers also include young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), a name that should be familiar to those who remember their grade-school American history; Bridger would become one of our foremost mountain men and guides.