‘Relay’ offers an innovative take on a throwback genre

Relay is a service for the deaf or hard of hearing that allows them to place phone calls to other parties through a trained intermediary. In the movie  “Relay,” directed by David Mackenzie of “Hell or High Water,” the phone service is also a central tool in the world of corporate espionage. 

Ash (Riz Ahmed) operates as a middle man between would-be whistleblowers and the corporations from which they’ve stolen reputation-ruining and illegal information. He’s not helping the whistleblower make the information public, but rather helping them return whatever they stole so they can move on with their lives. 

Ash keeps his identity a secret by contacting his clients through the Relay service. After all, federal law requires that all Relay calls are kept confidential. No records or recordings are kept. And Intermediaries are not allowed to intervene if they suspect illegal activity – they’re phone operators, not cops. 

Ahead of writing this review, I spent a good amount of time researching Relay, and apparently, this is all true. Chalk it up to a healthy distrust of the government, but I still find it a tad difficult to believe that operators wouldn’t be allowed to escalate something up the food chain if they suspected malfeasance (Bafflingly, Ash doesn’t even attempt to disguise what, exactly, he’s talking about on the phone.). Your enjoyment of the film might rest on your ability to buy in, but in most other respects, “Relay” is a perfectly enjoyable paranoid thriller, a fresh take on a genre that feels too much like a throwback these days. There’s tension in spades, and Mackenzie brings a lot of verve to the filmmaking – impressive, as I would imagine it’s difficult to make people talking on the phone all that interesting.

Ash’s newest client, Dr. Sarah Grant (Lily James), is in possession of documents that could take down a biotech company, and she should be an easy case. But, with a group of goons (led by head goon Dawson, played by Sam Worthington) hired by said company to take her out, she’s proving to be a little more complicated than Ash initially thought. 

Watching the film, Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” comes to mind – not because “Relay” is nearly as good, but because it is also a film where a director has to take a man doing something inherently uncinematic (listening to audio recordings) and make it enticing. While the concept of the Relay service as an accessory to crime is innovative, the phone calls themselves aren’t all that visually interesting. But whenever Mackenzie moves into one of the film’s several covert chase sequences, his ability as a thriller filmmaker comes to the forefront. 

A cat and mouse game begins to unfold, Dawson’s crew with their claws out for both Sarah and Ash, the search unfolding over a bustling New York City – one so busy it’s easy for Ash to disappear through the cracks, to walk unnoticed through the streets in a number of disguises (some sillier than others) while Tony Doogan’s beat-driven, melancholy score plays in the background. Everyone is always watching each other, the camera playing voyeur as much as the characters are as Ash watches Sarah through her window, or as Dawson searches for Ash in a crowd. Other people are merely something to hide behind as Dawson and Ash hunt each other down, and the tight but chaotic camerawork leaves the audience constantly questioning who saw what. 

“Relay” relies heavily on the gravity of its leading man, and heavily on his huge, mournful brown eyes (Ash doesn’t say a word for the first 30-ish minutes of the movie). Ahmed delivers on that mix of intelligence and warmth. The people chasing him are smart, but he’s always one step ahead – and, though he might have a budding savior complex when it comes to Sarah, his reluctant affection towards her endears him even more to the audience. He’s not completely cold, but he radiates the type of icy competency the lead of a movie like this needs to have – especially if “Relay” wants to get away with all of its twists and turns in the end. 

Ahmed has a steady hand at the center of “Relay,” but James has a slightly tougher sell, and will be the more interesting performance upon rewatch. Sarah is a baby bird who has been thrown to the wolves, but James plays up that fragility with an undercurrent of something darker. For Ash, Sarah is a victim, stuck in a game that she never asked for. But while Ash would never underestimate the cat in this little chase, he doesn’t apply that same courtesy to the mouse, perhaps not entirely aware of who might be watching for his weak points.  

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