Likely because of its obvious similarities to The Conversation, David Mackenzie’s first proper release in nearly a decade is being touted as some kind of heroic callback to the adult thrillers of the 1970s. As marketing campaigns go, it’s a bold gambit, since anyone old enough to remember those kinds of films the first time round will well into their 60s now. It would be more honest to say that Relay honors the concept of 1970s filmmaking, and in that respect skews closer to the clever low-budget neo-noirs of the 1990s, which used to be (rather lazily) labelled Tarantino-esque, even though they more closely resembled — like Mackenzie’s terrific 2016 neo-Western Hell or High Water — the earlier films of John Dahl (notably The Last Seduction and Red Rock West).
A vehicle for versatile British actor Riz Ahmed, Relay offers a new spin on the whistleblower drama, a subgenre that, at the turn of the millennium, attracted A-list stars in the likes of The Insider, Erin Brockovich and Michael Clayton. Relay offers a refreshing new take, as is laid out in an opening sequence that appears to be standalone but will be referenced throughout. A man named Hoffman is meeting, one on one, with the big boss at the big pharma company he used to work for, in a brightly lit diner. Hoffman looks pretty beaten up and greets the smartly dressed older man with contempt. “I thought I’d get to see what evil looks like, but you just look like everyone else,” he says. Handing over a file, he explains that “this is everything I took from you” and takes a selfie of the pair.
Sitting in disguise at a table nearby is Ash (Ahmed), who covertly follows Hoffman to Grand Central Station, where he gets a train to Poughkeepsie (perhaps a nod to The French Connection, another ’70s touchstone starring Gene Hackman). The inference is that Ash is tailing him for nefarious reasons; in fact, he is his guardian angel. The twist in this tale is that Ash works for whistleblowers who no longer wish to blow the whistle — with Ash’s help, they return all incriminating documents for a substantial fee and a guarantee that they will be left alone after signing a non-disclosure agreement.
Seeking a similar get-out is Sarah Grant (Lily James), an employee at a biotech company who, like Hoffman, has found evidence of malfeasance at her workplace. For Hoffman, this involves dangerous side-effects from drugs, while Grant has discovered “possible human food-chain issues” in a plan to grow insect-resistant wheat. Like Hoffman, Grant has incriminating evidence, but she just wants to “give everything back and get on with my life”. She visits a lawyer who is unable to help, but scribbles down a phone number of a mysterious and deeply unofficial service that can. “They call you back,” he says, “or they don’t.”
“They” is just one man, Ash, who does a very good job of hiding that fact, mostly by using a company called The Tri-State Messenger Service that mediates for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The beauty of this is that calls are confidential, and Sarah soon falls into step with Ash’s strange way of doing business. He is, however, a logistical genius and master of disguise, which come in handy when a team of tech-savvy heavies, led by a convincingly threatening Sam Worthington, stake out Sarah’s apartment in a sinister black van.
Though it goes on perhaps a little too long, the ensuing game of cat and mouse is ingenious and thrilling; though he uses computers and cell phones, Ash’s techniques are largely based on common sense. The disguises are fun too — notably when he hides in plain sight as a Muslim, sporting a white taqiyah on his head — and for a really long time he does all this with very few lines of dialogue. He does get to speak, however, and these are perhaps the film’s weakest scenes; rather than leave his backstory open to interpretation, Relay reveals Ash to be a reformed alcoholic, telling others at his AA meetings about his experiences as a Wall Street trader that led him to where he is now.
The ending is a trip and hard to see coming, possibly because it doesn’t make a great deal of sense when you really think about it. But, like the rest of the film, it does work on a visceral level, thanks to a good, low-key cast, one that enables Mackenzie to pull off screenwriter Justin Piasecki’s audacious curveball. Though his career has taken quite a few unexpected turns since his 2002 debut The Last Great Wilderness, Mackenzie is always at his best with this kind of material, and Ahmed is clearly in his element too. His calm, quiet cool is the film’s USP, not some sincere but perhaps misguided faith in cinephiliac nostalgia.
Title: RelayDirector: David MackenzieScreenwriter: Justin PiaseckiCast: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Willa Fitzgerald, Matthew MaherDistributor: Bleecker StreetRunning time: 1 hr 52 mins
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