Toronto 2024 Review: RELAY, Propulsive Paranoid Tradecraft

There is one line of dialogue repeated, over and over in Relay, like a mantra: “Go ahead.”

It is spoken by nearly every major character as they communicate through anonymous telephone operators, to preserve each other's privacy. This aspect alone makes for a superbly crafted thriller with its own unique rhythm. It offers a view of the modern day surveillance thriller in an interesting new light. The use of older technology, in this case legacy telephony, along with aging government institutions, and boots-on-the-ground street smarts all hacked together into a satisfying whole. 

Relay adds an interesting layer of digital-to-analog obfuscation, and a barnacle of imperfect liminal handshakes between government services, to keep its protagonist in the shadows, literally and figuratively.
For the first thirty or so minutes, Ash, played by the always riveting Riz Ahmed, does not speak a word aloud. I have said it before and will say it again, the actor is a goddamn thoroughbred, in his economy of body language, subtle glances, and, here, the movements-of-intent with his only his fingers. This is his defacto voice, a teletype device jury-rigged to a cellular phone.

Initially we see him observing a disheveled and anxious man in an empty cafe, waiting to exchange a thick folder of documents to a well-healed buyer (a cameo-ing from Victor Garber who makes the most of his few minutes on screen.) The buyer and seller take a reluctant selfie after their business is done; which is odd, but intriguing. The disheveled man flees by taxi to the nearest train station, while Ash follows him in a calm, detached and deliberate fashion. 

 

The way things are shot during this careful pursuit offers just enough information to lean in, but not enough to know what is really going on. Economical and dextrous, it plays like low-key cocktail of The Bourne Identity (grounded and absent the Übermensch blockbuster feel) and David Fincher’s recent, if under-appreciated, The Killer (minus the stream of conscious narration), and the wordless, far more visually opulent opener for Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.

 

Ash is not a government spook, or the product of some super spy program; he is more of an entrepreneurial freelancer who has carved out an interesting, and in apparently high demand, line of work. The product of which ensures leverage and a process for whistle-blowers to move and control their volatile and sensitive information safely. He also provides ‘insurance’ in the form of archived back-up copies, just in case either party acts in bad faith or has a change of heart midway. The massive imbalance of power and influence in corporate whistleblowing invites all manner of corporate fixers and weaponised government institutions. There is a very thin line between industry and public agencies of oversight. Ash, a lone wolf accountable only to his own wiles and craft, is a kind of information vigilante in the murky world of industrial espionage. 



 

After the cold open, Ash’s next ‘customer’ is a mid-level executive named Sarah Grant (Lily James). She was recently fired, blacklisted, and intimidated from her employer and possesses her own stolen thicket of documents; safety and quality control reports which expose a biotech conglomerate of malfeasance.

Relay is not preachy about the broad subject matter of pharmaceuticals or GMO agri-business practices, beyond the banality of evil (“it looks like everyone else"). This is a narrative MacGuffin which allows screenwriter Justin Piasecki to understand Ash’s mind-set and his process of keeping any, and all, traces of himself out of the public and private domain. Also hiding in plain sight from his clients, his adversaries, and from the state. Paranoia and pragmatism, insights into Ash’s pathologies and addictions, all are amalgamated in equal proportion. 

 

In this regard, Relay as a whole, a less bombastic, more low-key, version of Michael Mann’s Heat. With its big canvas melodramatic flourishes expertly subdued into more of a character study. Where an intelligent man with a disciplined professional code faces the choice of, and the consequences of, letting his defensive shell slip for an unexpected romantic connection. 



 

Ash and Elizabeth do all their communication through the professional Tri-State Relay service, a series of rotating operators who are themselves bound to confidentiality of all calls (and importantly, keep no records). In between the all instructions, the cautionary subterfuge, there is a kind of flirting connection slowly being established, through a turn of phrase, or a song recommendation. 

 

With every “Go ahead” that Sarah gives, the audio cue for the operator to type the message into the service, the relationship threatens to go beyond the task at hand. The only time we see Ash, as he really is beyond the series of costumes, dead drops, and tradecraft, is when he visits his actually deaf friend who provides him his burner phones (Ash goes through a lot of them), and fake identifications. Perhaps this guy even recommended the relay-service, it is never explicit, but many things here are implied and out of frame, but you can see Ash letting his guard down in a way that he does not even fully do with Sarah.

 

One of the things about MacKenzie as a director is that his films are genre and arthouse chameleon. From the Glasgow coal barge infidelity and murder triangle between Tilda Swinton Ewan McGregor and Peter Mullan in Young Adam, to the sun beached neo-noir Texan western Hell or High Water, many of his films inject a lot more character work than the arthouse or the commercial requirements of the whatever genre he plays.

Shot in New York (and New Jersey), on the streets and in dozens of real locations of the kind that most people would never make a second glance at: non-descriptive warehouses, bodegas, glass walled corporate spaces, hole in the wall eateries, train stations and post office kiosks, the normality of it all is its own character in the film. How Ash weaponizes loopholes and quirks in the system, and bends old-fashioned institutional bureaucracy to his own ends, makes this thriller a more textured and unique chase film. The perfect synthesis of character actor and movie star, Ahmed is game here for both the sprint, and the marathon.