Relay review: Riz Ahmed leads gripping old-school thriller
Thrillers like Relay typically go straight to streaming these days so I’m really thrilled that this is coming to cinemas. It’s really good!
Set in New York City, David Mackenzie‘s film follows Ash (Riz Ahmed) as a mysterious fixer who helps whistleblowers broker deals with their employers. To maintain his anonymity, he uses a telecommunications device for the deaf to correspond with all parties via a relay service. His next client is Sarah Grant (Lily James), who has incriminating documents about the side effects of her former company’s genetically enhanced wheat. After being harassed and intimidated by heavies, she wants to give the documents back – and needs Ash’s help to broker a deal and ensure her safety.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound particularly thrilling. How can the return of documents be exciting?! Well, somehow writer Justin Piasecki manages to make this movie gripping from the outset and throws in plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing right until the very end. It’s an intelligent thriller with a strong story, two interesting characters and major revelations.
But there’s some light action too, as it becomes something of a chase. A group of enforcers led by Sam Worthington and Willa Fitzgerald are running surveillance, harassing and intimidating Sarah, and Ash has to protect her and the documents and keep his identity a secret. It’s not easy, but he sends them on quite a wild goose chase, culminating in a few intense confrontations.
James and Ahmed may be the two leads, but they barely have any screen time together. You’d think it would become quite boring watching them communicate via an intermediary service, but their ‘conversations’ are edited in a way that keeps the tension and momentum, and they both sell the stakes well on their own. You never learn much about their characters – and usually this bothers me – but the mystery makes sense in this case.
Relay has gone under the radar over here, but it’s definitely worth supporting so they make more films like these.
In cinemas from Friday 31st October