Pipeline: A portrait of misguided activism
Driven by a sense of genuine urgency and buoyed by practical – if flawed – logic, Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a real-world thriller that forcefully makes a case for domestic terrorism in the face of the environmental crisis. Utilizing a fragmented timeline, Goldhaber shows us the scheme unfolding, stopping at key junctures to insert flashbacks, each devoted to the backstories on the ersatz terrorists. Xochitl (Barer), having just lost her mother, is adrift and without purpose, eager to make a difference in the world. Vulnerable, she’s susceptible to the radical talk she hears when she returns to college, falling under the sway of fellow student Shawn (Marcus Scribner), who’s tired of seeing his efforts to affect change not make any impact. Dwayne (Jake Weary) is bitter over the fact that the oil companies took his farm from him through eminent domain so the pipeline could go through his property, while Native American Michael (Forrest Goodluck) also harbors a sense of rage towards society and wants to strike back.
Meanwhile, Theo (Sasha Lane), diagnosed with leukemia she feels has been caused by living close to an oil refinery all her life, convinces her girlfriend, Alisha, (Jayme Lawson) to join her in the crusade, while Logan (Lukas Gage) and Rowan (Kristine Froseth) are just a couple of rich kids looking to cause trouble. Each of these characters meet via the great unifier of the 21st century, social media, and before you know it, they have convened at an abandoned home not far from their target, building bombs, ready to take on the world.
While it doesn’t have the high-gloss sheen of Ocean’s Eleven and isn’t quite as compelling as the criminally overlooked American Animals, Goldhaber is able to create a sense of ever-mounting tension as one minor error snowballs into an ever-mounting series of catastrophes. The insertion of the flashbacks smacks of cruelty at times, their appearance coming just as things are reaching a boiling point time and again during the crime. This proves to be a simple but very effective way to consistently build the edge-of-your-seat suspense that’s sustained until the film’s bracing conclusion.
The cast is uniformly fine, as a unit capturing the sense of naïve idealism and embracing the power of rash actions, both of which are akin to that age. Whether or not Pipeline advocates the radical approach it portrays is open to debate, yet it is an effective call for action where addressing climate change is concerned. However, its portrayal of how the vulnerable are seduced through social media is perhaps its most frightening aspect, as is the notion that there are no easy solutions to both of the problems it examines. In theaters.
Renfield a bloody mess
Chris McKay’s Renfield is a too-long-even-at-93-minutes debacle that leans into the director’s trademark sense of irreverence with tepid results. Stultifying and repetitious, the film’s saving grace is Nicolas Cage’s arch take on Count Dracula, an ironic, humorous portrayal that finds the perfect balance of comedy and horror, an approach McKay would have been wise to replicate, rather than drenching the movie in excessive gore and gratuitous violence, none of it achieving the over-the-top humor the filmmaker was aiming for.
The film gets off to a good start, as a rather clever premise is employed that, unfortunately, is soon lost amid the bloodshed. Renfield (a very good Nicholas Hoult) has come to a self-help support group for those trapped in abusive, co-dependent relationships. By listening to others, he recognizes some similarities between what they are going through and what he has to contend with regarding his master, Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage). But Renfield isn’t there to get help, rather, he’s intent on tracking down the abusers being spoken of to harvest them for his vampire lord.
However, things go south very quickly as the bug-eating familiar crosses paths with the Lobo crime family, who target him for assassination when he steps in to save Rebecca (Akwafina), a police officer trying to bring in the scion of the criminal clan, Teddy (Ben Schwartz), to justice. Renfield falls in love with the cop, prompting him to severe ties with Dracula and live his own life. Chaos and stupidity ensue.
Cage gives a great performance that’s worthy of a much better movie. Playing the King of the Vampires as a petulant teenager proves to be a masterstroke. Mercurial in his emotions, the Count shifts emotional gears on a dime, one minute employing dripping sarcasm, the next devolving into violent fits that serve to vent his childish tantrums. The violence he creates while doing so is monstrous, which is the key to the role. He’s a child, but a lethal one, a being of great power and no conscience, a true monster. As for Hoult, he’s fantastic in the title role, cowering in the face of pure evil, struggling mightily to find his footing, all done with a light touch that makes it all properly humorous and sympathetic.
Unfortunately, McKay is intent on showing us his shortcomings where filming and choreographing action scenes are concerned. Every 20 minutes or so, we’re bludgeoned with a flurry of images cut together for maximum confusion, his intention obviously being to cause seizures rather than excitement. As for the over-the-top violence, if you’ve been wanting to see a character’s arms ripped off and then used to beat others to death, your wait is over. There’s a good movie in the script somewhere. Examining the co-dependent relationship between Renfield and Dracula is a part of the mythos that’s been neglected and is ripe for further examination, one that could prove cathartic and meaningful for some viewers. Unfortunately, McKay’s Renfield is an adolescent movie, one focused on blood, not heart. In theaters.
This article appears in Field of dreams.
