“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” hit theaters this week, and there’s no nuance in its title.

It’s approximately 100 R-rated minutes on destroying a Texas pipeline in the name of environmental activism, social justice, stickin’ it to the Man, and other cool stuff.

While heist stories always have been popular, there’s long been the moral snag of getting audiences to root for the bad guys or at least the people seen breaking the law.

Indeed, Hollywood once had the self-imposed Hays Code that, among other things, required criminals, no matter how intriguing their story, to always meet a bad ending, generally either through the legal system or in death, including by their own hand.

Sometimes, storytellers have gotten around ethical qualms by having criminals do things ultimately for some kind of perceived good, as in Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor.

That’s the way “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” gets around the whole terrorism thing. It hoists its would-be moral flag on protection of the environment.

Right.

Check out the trailer.

Poster Comment:

Checked. The director-producer is Daniel Goldhaber. Sounds Jewish.