Relay ★★★

Relay is old-fashioned cinematic entertainment. Director David Mackenzie’s film is wholly unpretentious, driven by its story and the unique bond formed between its two central characters. Those people are a mysterious “fixer” named Ash (Riz Ahmed) who runs a business from the shadows, helping people who need a unique kind of help, somebody like Sarah Grant (Lily James). She worked for a food technology company that conducted research on a new development, only to discover that their innovation causes horrifying side effects. Instead of stopping production, they proceeded and covered up the report to drive profits ahead of a potential sale of the company. Sarah was appalled, demanded the company change course, and took the incriminating documents with her when they eventually fired her. Now, however, she feels the walls closing in around her. The company has hired goons to follow her around with the increasing threats driving Sarah to decide against outing the company, instead hoping to return the documents and return unscathed to a peaceful life. This is where Ash comes in.

As showcased in Relay’s opening scene, Ash helps to broker such deals. A man named Hoffman (Matthew Maher) was his latest client, returning some documents to the shady CEO (Victor Garber) behind a leading pharmaceutical company while Ash keeps a watchful eye on proceedings, his face unknown by both his client and the company involved. It is a lucrative business – as part of the settlements, he negotiates a lofty fee for himself paid by the company – and one that Ash takes great precautions with to conceal his identity. Though not deaf, he utilizes the Tri-State Relay Service and the accompanying technology to communicate with his clients and their former employers. Bound by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the relay service does not record any calls and their employees are forbidden from revealing the content of any conversations they have on behalf of those who use the service. It is the ideal cover with Ash’s voice never heard, his face never seen, and his communications essentially encrypted and beyond the scope of any warrants or police investigations. However, Sarah’s case is a particularly difficult one. The company is even more aggressive and has a team of people led by Dawson (Sam Worthington) keeping a close watch on her and it is not long before they try to smoke out Ash to figure out who is behind these negotiations.

Relay is a thrilling film, feeling like a 1970s thriller dropped into the 2020s with some technological upgrades but the same paranoid feeling and unfussy approach to its narrative. The relay service usage adds a unique angle, both in developing its story and in building the bond between Ash and Sarah. Though never seeing one another, there is a Sleepless in Seattle-esque mood to it with these two disparate souls connected by their unusual circumstances despite having never seen one another. As Relay teases a romantic angle, it can become a bit distracted – it is framed, largely, from Ash’s perspective and his feelings in these moments, which is crucial to the film’s dramatic climax – but Mackenzie utilizes it well in luring the audience into complacency, helping the final developments of these high-stakes negotiations land with proper shock and surprise. The final act can be a bit conventional and neat for how messy things become, but with Relay rarely showing ambition beyond being a plainly entertaining meat-and-potatoes thriller, one can hardly be too disappointed.

Mackenzie’s filmography is marked by its variance in genre and style, but it is interesting to think of his Taylor Sheridan-scripted Western Hell or High Water and the thematic parallels to Relay. Whereas Hell or High Water follows a cat-and-mouse chase through Texas as a bank robber steals money from the banks who he believes to have stolen from him, Relay follows Ash who has been driven to despair by the corporate machine. Hell or High Water is filled with post-recession economic rage. Relay is filled with malaise, guilt, and moral confusion. Ash is in this line of work to provide for others what he did not have in his own experience as a potential whistleblower that lost his nerve in the end. He can help with the brokering of the deal to return the documents, but he cannot help with the guilt that comes as one watches the horrible by-product of their own inability to come forward. He struggles with it and Hoffman, as heard in numerous voicemails he leaves for Ash, struggles with it as well. The knowledge that something is wrong is only half the battle and as seen in numerous aspects of modern society, one has to be willing and brave enough to stand up to reveal the evils in the corporate and political world. Otherwise, they end up just as guilty as those committing the heinous acts. Relay exists in this murky moral sphere as one wants these characters to make it through, but they are helping to cover up horrible misdeeds. Thus, it is no call-to-action, rather it is a portrayal of the doomed hope of the modern individual to free themselves from the reach of corporate corruption in modern society. It is too optimistic in the end, but before then, Relay showcases the human cost of working in this world of constant profit increase and creating shareholder value.

Backed with a typically strong performance from Riz Ahmed, Relay is a conventional but nevertheless entertaining thriller from director David Mackenzie. It is more focused on providing those thrills than anything else, but its likable characters and light commentary on the modern corporate situation does give it enough to keep one thinking and rooting for these characters to find a way through this crisis. Relay features rock solid filmmaking with old-school appeal and though it may not be the most ambitious film of the year, it lands as a flawed but satisfying and suspenseful work with a few surprising twists up its sleeves.