I like a good thriller. Especially one that deals with a subject matter I haven’t heard of before. That’s the case with Relay, the latest film from director David Mckenzie. I love learning something new from movies. The Tri-State Relay Service is something I had never heard of before. It’s a communication service for the deaf or hearing impaired. What a fascinating way to design a narrative around an action thriller like this one. Justin Piasecki wrote the script based on this concept, and it was a pretty damn good story. I was glued to the screen once the opening credits started, and I’m sure as many others will see this movie as well.

Sarah Grant (Lily James) is a woman who worked for a pharmaceutical company. She had access to sensitive reports of malfeasance by this company. Once she tried to come forward with her complaint about said issue, she started getting herself into deep water with the company, and eventually, she was fired. As an insurance policy, she took the documents she was privy to. After seemingly having a lot of problems come her way, she decided to give the reports back to the company. She enlisted the help of a fixer, Ash ( Riz Ahmed), who deals in matters such as this. 

I’m a big fan of both Lilly James and Riz Ahmed. They started in smaller films and parlayed their successes into big tent pole movies like the live-action Cinderella, James, and Star Wars: Rogue One. Ever since they’ve both done a lot of different things in their careers. James has played Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy as well as the love interest in Baby Driver, and Ahmed has been in some awards winning television series, The Night of and Academy Awards winning films like The Sound of Metal. Together, they’ve parlayed their early success into great careers. They make a fantastic pair opposite each other in Relay. The yin and Yang of the story help give them a lot to chew off. When the script is good, great actors can shine like these two do in this movie. I’d love to see them again in something. Maybe a rom-com or something.

The cast isn’t just filled with two of these fanatic actors. There is a whole group of other characters led by Sam Worthington as Dawson. He’s essentially the bad guy who’s trying to get the James character at any cost. It’s nice to see Worthington play a villain for a change. He’s always the good guy in movies, it seems to me. He is pretty good at his job as this character is trying to get his company’s stolen documents back. This is a bit of a cat and mouse game between the Ahmed character and Worthington’s team. They are both very adept at using technology, which plays a big part in this story. It’s amazing what kind of surveillance there is these days. Big Brother is indeed watching over all of us if it’s necessary.

As aforementioned, I want to talk more about The Tri-State Relay Service. It was a phenomenal way to weave this story together. The conversations back and forth between Ahmed and James’ characters, as well as Ahmed and Worthington’s characters, were so terrifically edited together. I was so fascinated by how this series worked in context with the film’s narrative. All the different operators were a major part of the story, and they didn’t know what they were involved in because they didn’t keep records of their calls.They are just an intermediary from one person to another. I’ve seen anything like this before in a movie. It’s such an innovative way to create dialogue and tension in a film. I’m amazed when I see something new like this.

One thing about movies that are filmed on location is that the filmmaker can make that location, in this case, New York City and New Jersey, a big part of the story. The director, Mckenzie, made the cities he filmed in a major part of the story. The characters went everywhere in the New York City area. Train stations, opera houses, and even Time Square. With any movie so specifically set, it has to be authentic to that location, and this does that. Even though I’m a Boston guy, I don’t mind when a film does justice to a city like New York. It was literally a character in the movie. That was a pretty cool decision on the filmmakers part. It couldn’t have been cheap, but It worked well for what he was going for.

I love a good old-fashioned thriller like Three  Days of the Condor or The Marathon Man where the leads are running for their lives from some kind of enigmatic force. Relay reminded me of those kinds of films. Mckenzie gave the viewer all the pieces to the puzzle, and we could only sit back and watch as this tight taut story unfolded before our eyes.The screenwriter even threw in a twist for good measure.These are the kinds of movie films fans need more often. It’s amazing that Bleecker Street took so long to release this after they bought it out of TIFF last year. I would have loved to have seen this earlier in the year. Hopefully, people will go see this thriller with great imagination this weekend. It deserves the viewership in theaters.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen