How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) on Netflix
Xochitl and Theo recruit six others to blow up an oil pipeline in West Texas. A Texan whose family land was seized and a self-taught explosives expert join them.
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- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb6.8/1012,689 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
Xochitl loses her mother during a heat wave in Long Beach, where oil refineries pollute the air. Her friend Theo is diagnosed with terminal cancer tied to that pollution. Their campus divestment campaign has moved slowly, and Xochitl wants more radical environmental action. The two gather Alisha, Theo's girlfriend; Shawn, a film student; Dwayne, a Texan whose family land was taken by an oil company under eminent domain; Michael, from a North Dakota reservation, who taught himself explosives; and Rowan and Logan, a young couple. The group holds that non-disruptive action is not enough. They plan to detonate homemade explosives along an unguarded stretch of a newly built pipeline in West Texas, hoping the company will halt its Texas operations.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When the film was released in the United States, 23 federal and state entities issued 35 warnings that it could inspire sabotage, and FBI documents obtained by Rolling Stone cited concern it could inspire attacks on energy targets; the film's website had a Take Action section mapping pipelines in the US and Canada.
- The filmmakers interviewed climate activists and pipeline experts and drew on real cases, including Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya's imprisonment for vandalizing the Dakota Access Pipeline and a friend's leukemia diagnosis linked to living near a chemical plant, which shaped the character Theo.
- A government counterterrorism contractor advised on the bomb-making scenes, and the explosion sequence mixed practical effects with CGI: a 150-foot mock-up built of industrial cardboard and wood was detonated to create the explosive and fire effects.
- Composer Gavin Brivik flew to the set to record samples, including banging on oil drums in the desert, and those recordings became the foundation of the film's opening track.
- Filming ran 22 days, mostly in New Mexico, but a key sequence was shot in North Dakota on the reservation where actor Forest Goodluck's family lived.
