‘Relay’ Review

‘Relay’, the espionage thriller from director David Mackenzie, feels like a relic from a different era in the best of ways, recalling the paranoid conspiracy films of the 1970s. While momentum lags and the story becomes a little too convoluted, a little too generic in the second half, the first hour of ‘Relay’ is a clever, tightly plotted thrill ride that moves with a twisty, propulsive logic.

Riz Ahmed plays Ash, a variation on George Clooney’s ‘Michael Clayton’ – a corporate fixer whose skills are used not to protect company secrets, but to serve as an anonymous broker between potential whistleblowers and their villainous companies all in the name of self interest. One such whistleblower is Sarah Grant (Lily James), a scientist who, after being dismissed from her company for telling an inconvenient truth, steals away with documents proving that the company is aware its artificial food solution will cause disastrous side effects. As threats to her safety escalate, Sarah seeks help, looking to return the stolen files so long as she’ll be left alone. This leads her to a phone number, a call service. After leaving a message, she is contacted by a Relay service, which is generally used to help deaf or hard of hearing people communicate over the phone, but here is used by Ash to protect his anonymity and help Sarah get out of trouble safely. All at a price, of course.

The first hour of this movie hums along thrillingly, a surprising and exciting cat and mouse game turned on its head, in which the intimidating, ominous corporate mercenaries are being toyed with by the always-one-step-ahead Ash. In this first half, Riz Ahmed rarely speaks as he orchestrates every minute detail of his plots, ensuring that he is in full control even as his client lives in a state of constant fear.

Unfortunately, the taut and exhilarating suspense plotting eventually snaps as the story loses momentum and Mackenzie makes up for that by shifting more into standard action movie fare, with Ash being re-routed into a generic good guy who needs to beat the bad guys to save the girl. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s a disappointing turn after such a strong first half that deftly handled Ash’s moral ambiguity even as we followed him as a clever and self-serving antihero.

Ahmed carries the film, delivering nuance to his character with very few lines of dialogue. Sam Worthington leads the group of corporate bad guys filled with personality, each individual feeling like a fully formed person. The group performances and obvious camaraderie make the villains, if not likable, at least engaging and entertaining. Sadly, as the movie overall shifts into more trite territory in the second half, so do these characters, becoming more of the grim-faced, anonymous goons of a thousand other action movies. If there is a weak performance in the cast, it belongs to Lily James, but that may have less to do with her acting than it does with her character being a rather standard issue damsel in distress for the bulk of the film.

Had ‘Relay’ been able to sustain the momentum from its brilliant first half, it surely would have become one of my favorite movies of the year. But sadly it wasn’t meant to be, resulting in a film that is entertaining and enjoyable but disappointing in light of what could have been. Ultimately, ‘Relay’ is a well-acted and entertaining conspiracy thriller that falls a little too deeply into generic tropes, and yet also features some of the most witty good guy vs bad guy tug of war action in recent film memory.

Relay
Rated R for language.
Running Time: 1 hour and 52 minutes

Director David Mackenzie
Writers Justin Piasecki
Stars Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington
Rating R
Running Time 112 Minutes
Genres Action, Thriller