I’ll be honest: I’m a sucker for a good cat-and-mouse story and in this era of fast-evolving tech and surveillance, characters staying one step ahead of their pursuers can make an interesting and challenging premise. So, while Relay doesn’t technically offer anything new, it rises to the challenge of delivering a contemporary and potential David Vs. Goliath premise with a distinctly cynical bent.
Pacing is often a problem with modern stories – films that should be tv shows and vice versa. There’s certainly an argument that Relay, with genuine tensions and packed full of smart phones, smart people and corporate conflict though it is, could have benefited from being a short (perhaps 3-5 episode) limited series. There’s obvious touchstones of films like Michael Clayton and The Negotiator. However, with the ideas of technology, morality and duplicity strewn across a life-and-death, cat-and-mouse power-play, there’s also obvious echoes of 24, though it’s Kiefer Sutherland’s more recent series Rabbit Hole in 2023 that springs to mind. As it stands, the first half in which Ash (Riz Ahmed) is more of an enigma, keeping clients at a distance and his morality in pragmatic neutral, works best. He’s an Equalizer without the Good Samaritan moral-imperative, a player who wants to balance the scales and reset the situation rather than actively champion the downtrodden for the win. The Relay system, designed as an intermediary text-to-speech service to help the deaf and after which the film takes its name, guarantees Ash a by-proxy anonymity to all parties, allowing him to act from afar as referee and institute fail-safes by which both sides must abide. The inevitable pivot to Ash’s more personal investment and glimpses of his personal backstory feel as if they are bowing to format expectations and don’t always feel organic, there to conveniently join dots within the just-under-two-hours running-time.
Ash is both capable and coldly strategic but never foregoes his humanity. Riz Ahmed (Rogue One, Three Lions, Nightcrawler) has been making a name for himself for several years and here makes a good central character, less of a traditional heroic figure and more an enigmatic fixer with his own reasons for doing what he does. Another British actor, Lily James (Pam and Tommy, What’s Love Got to Do With It?) gives Sarah, a potential whistleblower, both an apparent vulnerability and then a more determined outlook. Supporting players Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Jared Abrahamson and Pun Bandhu also make good corporate pursuers as the team assigned to bring Ash down and the ever-reliable Victor Garber makes an early appearance as Ash’s M.O. is initially explained.
British director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Under the Banner of Heaven, Outlaw King) does a decent job of cranking up the tension and making this feel like a contemporary conflict (because we’re all a little wary of technology and trust in CEOs is hardly at an all-time high). The one thing that’s impressive on a technical level but distracting in the moment is what appears to be either composite work or some stiffer background choreography, especially in the first half of the film. It’s no small task to put characters in the middle of a modern metropolis and kudos is to be given for the degree accomplished here by in-situ filming and post-production, but (ironically) there’s still moments that feel orchestrated and inorganic and where you just glimpse the seams.
Otherwise, there’s a satisfying use of tech and some inventive subverting in the power-plays between pursued and pursuer. Conspiracy-theory die-hards won’t be too shocked with some story developments that are subtly flagged early on (no bragging, but none of the story-beats came as a total surprise) and the last few minutes ultimately feel more tropey and less climactic than it could if it delivered fully on early promise. (If this was a mini-series, it might just suggest leaving an avenue open for a second season).
In the end this Relay system is definitely worth catching, though perhaps when it starts to stream rather than at the cinema
- Story8
- Acting8
- Direction8
