As the title suggests -- no, announces -- the makers of "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" have an agenda.
They've also managed to make a gripping movie while bellowing from their soapbox.
Director Daniel Goldhaber doesn't exactly adapt Swedish ecology professor Andreas Malm's book but instead imagines what would happen if a group of young people tried to put its principles into forceful action.
Their plan is to demolish a major Texas pipeline, and some welcome the label of "ecoterrorists" because they want to scare the rest of the world away from fossil fuels.
What makes the movie work is that their plan might not. The crew is young and vary in their expertise, and there aren't many people who have done this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Ethan Hunt and the Mission: Impossible team are unavailable.
Michael (Forrest Goodluck) is an American Indian from North Dakota who knows enough about demolition and explosives to make online tutorials. One wonders if he might get caught before the attack, and so far he seems better at blowing up his temper than taking out a target.
Speaking of social media influencing, a couple from Portland, Ore., named Logan (Lukas Gage) and Rowan (Kristine Frose) look as if they've stepped out of a TikTok video and spend more time doing lines than taking part in the plot.
Far more committed are Shawn (Marcus Scribner), Xochitl (Ariela Barer, who wrote the script with Goldhaber and Jordan Sjol), Theo (Sasha Lane) and Theo's girlfriend Alisha (Jayme Lawson). Theo is dying from carcinogens she got from the chemicals at a nearby refinery. You can excuse her for downing booze after recovery meetings.
At first, Dwayne (Jake Weary) seems to have walked in from another movie. He and his wife pray before meals and have a large flag at their door. He's actually the most capable member of the team. He knows the terrain and works more than talks.
It's almost as if Goldhaber channeled Dwayne in the director's chair. He keeps pontificating to a minimum and the pacing brisk. In lesser films, the flashbacks might have lost viewers, but here they make the quest seem more rational even if the participants sometimes aren't. By delaying the revelations of certain characters, they come off as less self-righteous or mystifying.
Goldhaber and company have also had the decency to ask questions about the attack that strawmen would not. For example, wouldn't destroying a pipeline create a Deepwater Horizon-like disaster, negating the benefits?
They also avoid conventional villains. We don't see a corporate fat cat anywhere in the movie. The closest thing "How to Blow Up a Pipleline" has to bad guys are activists, like Michael's mother, Joanna (Irene Bedard), whose efforts are just too slow and puny to end possible extinction.
The 14-year-old in me still got to see things explode (hats off to crew working on a low budget), but I'm not so sure this is the most effective way to keep our species on the planet, either. Still, Goldhaber has enough skill to make viewers care if his motley ecowarriors don't blow themselves up in the process.