Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Relay’ on Netflix, a bumpy but intriguing paranoia thriller starring Riz Ahmed and Lily James
The key plot device in Relay (now on Netflix) is a communication service functioning as a confidential liaison between a person with hearing or speaking disabilities and a second party. It’s called a relay service – hence the title, of course – and it’s the hinge point of this thriller in which Riz Ahmed and Lily James use old-school tech in the modern world to engage in corporate espionage. Directed by David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water), the film brings some ’70s-flavored paranoia to the current day, proving that the tools may change but the feeling of someone watching you always stays the same.
RELAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: We hereby establish John, whose real name is Ash (Ahmed), as a guardian angel of sorts. Granted, he’s paid well to do so, but he’s looking out for the little guy, in this case, a man with bruises and busted blood vessels (Matthew Maher) who hands over important documents to a jackass CEO. After the exchange, Ash, dressed in the orange vest of an Average Construction Worker, follows the battered fellow to make sure no one harasses him as he gets on the subway. Then Ash fades even further into the bustle and noise of the city, sneaking off to a secret hidey-hole to stash “insurance” copies of valuable documents in a safe, then dropping in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, because he needs a couple of character traits lest he be just a cold but brilliant loner type.
Elsewhere: Sarah (James) sits across from a high-powered lawyer in a high-rise office and nervously explains how she’s a researcher at a bioengineering corp – or used to be one, since she ran afoul of the company after she flagged a project involving genetically modified wheat as harmful to consumers, which of course might tank the company’s pending gatwillion-dollar sale. She has the damning report in her possession, and has been harassed and intimidated by company reps to the point where she’s abandoning the notion of being a whistleblower and just wants to return the papers without repercussion. She’s no Snowden, I guess.
The lawyer wants nothing to do with this mess, so he gives Sarah an “unofficial channel” to resolve the issue: Ash’s phone number. The relay service is his Thing: He attaches his smartphone to an old teletype machine and the person in the relay’s phone bank dictates the communiques to his clients. He needs $50k up front and she gets him the dough and he soon proves he’s worth it. She has to destroy her cell phone and use burners and fake IDs and leave him cryptic voicemails and other subterfugey stuff. Her first request is to get the assholes in the surveillance van outside her apartment building to go away – assholes led by mega-asshole Dawson (Sam Worthington). Ash plays some clever games to get them to back off, primarily stemming from threats to release the report to the media and authorities. He then engineers a series of tradeoffs and payoffs, but Dawson’s a big swingin’ you-know-what who isn’t fond of losing. I mean, if all this was too easy, we wouldn’t have much of a movie, would we?
Photo: Everett Collection
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Mackenzie cribs a move or two from Coppola classic The Conversation, while the unusual romantic tension that develops between Sarah and Ash is in roughly the same ballpark as corporate-espionage comedy Duplicity.
Performance Worth Watching: His Oscar nomination for Sound of Metal notwithstanding, Ahmed is a terribly underrated actor. Here, he goes long stretches without saying a word, and honestly, the film might’ve been better and the performance even more fascinating if he was mute for the duration. As the old cliche goes, some actors can hold us even while reading the phone book; Ahmed could do so by merely paging through one.
Sex And Skin: None.
Photo: Heidi Hartwig) / © Bleecker Street Media / Courtesy Everett Collection
Our Take: You can tell Relay is directed by an old pro (Mackenzie’s skilled at helming suspenseful crime dramas), written by someone with a nose for detail (relative newcomer Justin Piasecki) and likely futzed with by studio dopes who don’t know what the f— they’re doing. That last point is just an educated guess. The film’s first 90 minutes are intricate and engrossing, with enjoyable dramatic developments and payoffs nestled in the psychology of surveillance, paranoia and human connection/disconnection. And Ahmed and James are allowed some creative leeway to turn their minimally written characters – curiously, neither seems to have friends or family – into mini icons of loneliness who might sense that in each other, even through the relay service. (There might be a whole other film, perhaps a comedy, in this premise – the relay-service operator must maintain confidentiality while conveying highly sensitive information and the awkward back-and-forth of phone sex.)
Although the light romantic thread of this plot feels contrived, it’s not a game-changer, nor is it why I posit the studio-meddling theory. No, the big problem here is an anything-goes climax where the film’s balance of cerebral intricacy and frayed-nerves tension goes out the window and is replaced by cynically rendered chases and gunfights. It’s an entertaining movie that abandons subtlety for developments that hold water like a pair of gothboy fishnets. Whether such Hollywood hogwash ruins the entire experience is debatable, but there’s no question that this is about 77 percent of a very good movie.
Our Call: Hey, 77 percent ain’t that bad. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
