On August 28, the Scottish director David Mackenzie’s thriller Relay, starring Riz Ahmed, Lily James and Sam Worthington, was released in theaters. Finally, we can state that we have received a worthwhile genre movie, and it was filmed according to an original script, which is doubly valuable and pleasant. All the details without spoilers, as always, are in the review below.
Pluses:
The film has something to surprise you (whether this surprise is positive or negative is up to the viewer to decide); there are enough tense scenes and suspense, which is vital for the thriller genre; good acting performances, especially from Riz Ahmed;
Minuses:
Someone will not like the plot twists prepared by the authors; towards the end, the movie slips into a regular action movie;
“Relay”
Genre thriller, action movie
Director David Mackenzie
Starring Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Jared Abrahamson, Ace Davis, Matthew Maher, Victor Garber
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
A young man named Ash does an extraordinary job — he mediates conflicts between large companies and potential whistleblowers, including former employees who have compromising materials and can reveal terrible corporate secrets. Everything in Ash’s work is subject to clear algorithms, structured rules, and well-honed actions.
That is until he was approached by a certain Sarah Grant, who came into possession of secret reports suggesting serious reputational risks for the food giant Cybo Sementis, because their products have serious side effects that the company, of course, conceals. This situation could have extremely negative consequences for Sarah, and, as it turns out, for Ash as well.
It’s hard not to notice that there have been a lot of action thrillers lately about guys who are used to relying on, well, sorry, on pro Jason Statham, they rely on their brains rather than the power of a magic uppercut. They even have similar names — let’s recall the April novelties “The Amateur” and, to a lesser extent, “The Accountant 2”; now it’s the turn of Relay.
The film is directed by the Scotsman David Mackenzie, who is used to making films of absolutely different genres, and his most notable work is the neo-western Hell or High Water (2016), which was widely recognized and received many nominations for prestigious awards, including 4 Oscars. Relay is unlikely to appear on any awards season lists, but it is quite competent as a genre example that has its roots in old-school paranoid thrillers — here we should mention Brian De Palma and specifically Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974).
The analog-era old-schoolness of the waibu is reinforced by the way the protagonist works. He carries out his intricate operations using a telecommunication device for the deaf, communicating with customers anonymously through a relay service. When it comes to money transfers, he prefers good old-fashioned mail to electronic transactions. His cell phones don’t last longer than one call. Even in a situation that required an immediate improvisational solution, Ash relied on a newsstand, which, fortunately for him, still exists in New York. Not to mention the fact that in one of the scenes, a record by the legendary The Who is flashing in the frame.
And so, when the man responds to the cry for help from Lily James’ suffering character and finally takes up the cause, this is probably the best part of the movie. It sets the tone for the story and puts the viewer in a certain mood, and when you see the sinister antagonist played by Sam Worthington and his team nervous for good reason, it’s really impressive.
In this way, Mackenzie and screenwriter Justin Piasecki manage to hook the viewer and don’t let go until the final credits roll. And the further the events develop, the more you’ll be rooting for the taciturn Ash.
Not least, empathy comes from Riz Ahmed’s appropriately restrained but extremely confident performance. But also because when his character does start talking, we better understand his motives. Which, by the way, are a certain contrast to the actor’s role in Venom (2018), where Ahmed played the CEO of the dishonest Life Foundation corporation. Plus, towards the end, the story itself will leave the viewer with no choice but to feel for Ash, even if there may be questions about certain twists and turns (and the very twist itself).
Relay also reminds us of the opening of The Night Agent (2023): in that film, the protagonist also advised a damsel in distress over the phone on how to avoid falling into the hands of her enemies. But the creators of the Netflix show almost immediately succumbed to the temptation to produce an entertaining spy action show without any hint of intellectuality. In other words, the remote work of an agent was actually not so long. Instead, the authors of Relay, to their credit, had the ability and patience to strike the right balance between the suspense-thriller basis and the action part, where guns speak instead of words.
The fact that the film eventually turns into a banal action movie can be considered an omission, a loosening of the grip. But on the other hand, all this happens only in the climax, and even then you watch what is happening on the screen with sincere interest.
Even though Mackenzie’s film is inspired by classic paranoid thrillers of the distant past, it has its own face, which is especially important in an era of endless sequels, reboots, and adaptations. It’s a good example of a genre movie that may stumble somewhere on its way to the finale, but overall it gives you a fascinating almost two hours of screen time.
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