Relay
A sleek, smart thriller starring Riz Ahmed as a cyber-spy who protects corporate whistleblowers and Lily James as the vulnerable client who tempts him into breaking his own rules.
If you’ve never heard of the “Black List,” it’s a selection of unproduced screenplays that makes the rounds every year in Hollywood. A number eventually became movies and went on to great acclaim and even Oscars, including “Spotlight,” “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network.”
“Relay,” written by Justin Piasecki, languished on the list for a long time before getting made, and it’s certainly worth the wait.
Directed by David Mackenzie, who made 2017’s excellent “Hell or High Water” — another Black List standout — it’s a sleek and smart thriller starring Riz Ahmed as a cyber-sleuth who protects corporate whistleblowers and Lily James as the vulnerable client who tempts him into breaking his own rigid rules.
This is not one of those movies that’s deeply invested in character-building. What we learn about Ash (Ahmed) and Sarah (James) comes during the in-between moments of the potboiler plot.
Ash is very tightly controlled and careful; we’re not sure if he became that way because of the dangerous terrain he regularly traverses or vice-versa. Sarah seems more loose and lost, someone who set out to do the right thing but now is just looking to cut bait and move on with her life — and feels guilty about the change of heart.
The storytelling is lean and briskly paced; at just under two hours, it seems like it goes by much more quickly. There are plenty of thrills, excellent tension-building in the Hitchcockian mold and some twists that faked even me out.
(It’s not bragging. When you’ve watched as many movies as I have, it’s hard not to see familiar patterns in the stitching.)
Ash has a very specific job description. People who have pilfered corporate secrets, usually with the intention of uncovering wrongdoing, find their way to him. They never meet him or even know who he is, or that it’s a single guy since he always refers to his operation with plural pronouns.
He never even talks to them directly, using phone service for the deaf called Tri-State Relay. He types into a special computer, which the service operator reads to the person on the other end, and then it goes the other way in reverse. This way there’s no voice match or record of what was said, since these services are protected under privacy laws.
It’s a real thing known as TTY or TDD, which I’m familiar with through my day job. Ash is basically exploiting a service meant for people with disability, but for an arguably altruistic end.
Through the relay, Ash acts as go-between with the company, offering the secure return of their materials in exchange for leaving alone his clients, usually former employees. Of course, there’s a hefty fee involved, which Ash justifies as necessary because he’s serving both parties in resolving a contentious situation. If the corporations don’t pay up or anything happens to his client, the damaging information gets released to law enforcement authorities and the press.
He has developed a complicated set of procedures and infrastructure to protect the whistleblowers and their stolen data, while safeguarding himself from any kind of identification. There’s false IDs, hidden storage compartments, mail forwarding from state-to-state, high-tech gizmos, disguises and various cutouts and fake-outs.
It’s essentially spycraft, and this is a spy movie — though Ash is less Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt than Simon Pegg’s Benji the computer nerd.
Sarah worked as a scientist for Cybo Sementis, a big agricultural conglomerate, hoping to create a new type of grain that could feed millions globally. But she found test results indicating it could cause just as much harm as good. She intended to release the report to stop the product from going out, but now she’s got cold feet.
Part of this is due to the boot heel Cybo is currently pressing on her neck. She was fired, driven out of her home and even her car set on fire. She moved to a new place but it’s being staked out by a team of rough types, led by Dawson (Sam Worthington) and Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald).
Whatever information she’s got, it seems clear the company is not just going to let it slide.
The job starts out like any other: Ash gains Sarah’s trust through their relay calls, and easily outfoxes the early moves by the Cybo security team. They arrange for a half-million in cash to be delivered to one of Ash’s many mailboxes, and things are set in motion for Sarah to meet up directly with the CEO to return the report. Of course, the situation starts to fall apart.
Additionally, Ash finds himself drawn to Sarah, even though they’ve never met. Though surreptitiously he tails her — at first to make sure she’s following out his instructions, but later for something more. He even jiggers around with the protocol of the relay service in order to have a more human exchange.
Ash doesn’t seem to have anything in his life other than the job. He’s a recovering alcoholic still somewhat fresh on the wagon, and his only friend is Wash (Eisa Davis), a New Jersey detective from his support group. Even her, he keeps in the dark about what he really does, copping only to be a bike courier.
Does he think he and Sarah can have something else between them after their arrangement has concluded? Maybe, maybe not, but part of him knows he needs something more. For her part, Sarah sees the guy on the other end of the relay (or what she takes to be a guy) as a raft she can cling to in a raging storm.
“Relay” is executed with a brimming cup of imagination and intelligence. There’s plenty of movies that feel like they’re playing down to their audience, presenting entertainment in easily digestible bites. This one keeps you awake and on your toes.