Relay

Relay, the latest film from Scottish director David Mackenzie, is a paranoid thriller that cleverly updates the genre’s 1970s roots with the anxieties of our hyper-connected present. From the outset, the film recalls the shadowy unease of Alan J. Pakula and Francis Ford Coppola, with echoes of The Parallax View and The Conversation, yet it grounds its story in a strikingly modern detail: a telecommunications relay service. This service, used by the Deaf and hard of hearing, becomes the ingenious tool of secrecy for a mysterious fixer named Ash, played with masterful restraint by Riz Ahmed. The result is a film that is taut, atmospheric, and deeply concerned with the fragility of truth and the price of anonymity, even as its final twists threaten to undermine its careful construction.

At the heart of Relay is Ash, an enigmatic figure who lives in self-imposed isolation in New York. He works in shadows, helping whistleblowers who have second thoughts and simply want to walk back from exposing the corporations that have ruined their lives. His anonymity is protected by his use of the relay service: he types his instructions, and an operator’s neutral voice delivers his words to terrified clients or powerful executives. We never hear Ash’s voice in the film’s early stretches, a choice that enhances his aura of invisibility. Watching him slip through the city in nondescript disguises—security guard, delivery worker, bike courier—we feel his ghostly omnipresence. This recalls the lonely figure of Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul, the surveillance expert in The Conversation, though here the paranoia is refracted through the corporate espionage of the digital age.

Ash’s latest client is Sarah Grant, played by Lily James, a scientist who uncovers devastating evidence that her biotech employer’s genetically modified crops could poison consumers. Once determined to blow the whistle, she finds herself stalked, discredited, and worn down until she simply wants out. It is here that Ash enters, guiding her through a labyrinth of burner phones, coded package drops, and misdirection flights designed to smoke out the pursuers on her trail. Her enemies are embodied by a corporate strike team led by Sam Worthington, who plays Dawson with icy menace, and Willa Fitzgerald, his determined lieutenant. Their relentless pursuit lends Relay its cat-and-mouse dynamism, with set pieces in airports, post offices, and New York backstreets that bristle with tension. One sequence at Pittsburgh International Airport—part diversion, part psychological duel—is among the film’s most memorable, a reminder that suspense can thrive in the banal mechanics of logistics.

Much of the film’s pleasure lies in this procedural precision, the sense that Ash has thought out every variable. Director David Mackenzie, known for Hell or High Water, again shows his fascination with process, capturing the details of Ash’s clandestine trade with clarity and urgency. Cinematographer Giles Nuttgens renders the city in sleek metallic tones, while editor Matt Mayer keeps the pace tight without losing sight of the quieter moments of observation. There are strong supporting turns, including Victor Garber as a smug CEO in an opening diner exchange and Matthew Maher as a burned-out former client whose “freedom” feels hollow. These early vignettes establish the cynical world in which Ash operates, a universe where moral compromise is inevitable and every player knows the game is rigged.

Yet Relay is not content to be a mere exercise in paranoia. Beneath Ash’s meticulous rules and his cultivated invisibility lies a man marked by loneliness and regret. We glimpse this at his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he introduces himself under the name John, hinting at a troubled past that drove him into this shadowy profession. These moments, however, divide critics: while some see them as enriching his character, others feel they diminish his mystery. What is undeniable is Riz Ahmed’s performance, which thrives in silence and subtlety. His watchful eyes and contained movements convey a man who has built his entire identity around being unseen, yet whose defenses begin to crack under the pressure of proximity to Sarah. The attraction between the two, conducted almost entirely through typed words relayed by strangers, becomes a strange, hesitant intimacy—less a romance than a recognition of shared vulnerability.

Thematically, Relay asks uncomfortable questions about whistleblowing in an era when exposing the truth no longer guarantees justice. Sarah’s plight resonates because it mirrors real-world cases: individuals discover corporate malfeasance, only to find that going public may destroy them while the corporations continue unscathed. Ash, for his part, is both savior and accomplice: he rescues whistleblowers from ruin but also ensures that the incriminating evidence returns to the very entities it condemns. He is an antihero in the truest sense, choosing the survival of individuals over the greater good. This moral ambiguity is one of the film’s most compelling elements, even as it risks alienating audiences who prefer their heroes untainted.

Where Relay falters is in its final act. After an hour and a half of finely calibrated suspense, the film lunges toward a twist that feels out of step with its careful realism. Critics have noted that the climax veers into contrivance, with Ash suddenly behaving in ways inconsistent with his hyper-cautious persona. What should have been a morally searing conclusion risks becoming a formulaic shootout, flattening the emotional complexity that had been so painstakingly built. Still, even this misstep cannot entirely erase the film’s cumulative effect: the unease of watching two lonely people navigate a world where trust is impossible and survival is a negotiation.

Relay may not reach the paranoid heights of its inspirations, but it carves out a space for itself as a distinctly modern thriller, one that makes ingenious use of overlooked technology to tell a story about surveillance, secrecy, and the compromises we make in pursuit of safety. Riz Ahmed anchors it with one of his most quietly magnetic performances, Lily James lends fragility and resolve to Sarah, and David Mackenzie proves once again that he can marry genre thrills with social commentary. For much of its runtime, Relay is an engrossing exercise in controlled paranoia, a thriller that reminds us that in today’s world, truth is negotiable, safety is provisional, and even the devices meant to connect us can become tools of isolation.

Relay
Directed by David Mackenzie
Written by Justin Piasecki
Produced by Gillian Berrie, Basil Iwanyk, David Mackenzie, Teddy Schwarzman
Starring  Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington
Cinematography : Giles Nuttgens
Edited by Matt Mayer
Music by Tony Doogan
Production companies : Black Bear Pictures, Thunder Road Films, Sigma Films
Distributed by Bleecker Street (United States), Sony Pictures Releasing France (France)
Release dates : September 8, 2024 (TIFF), August 22, 2025 (United States), November 26, 2025 (France)
Running time : 112 minutes

Seen on September 12 2025 at the Deauville International Center

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