RELAY - Mark Reviews Movies

Relay, Bleecker Street

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 21, 2025

Justin Piasecki's screenplay for Relay feels old-fashioned, in that's a thriller about a game of cat-and-mouse between two parties, and quite modern, in that much of the game itself unfolds by way of using and manipulating modern technology. It feels basic, because the plot is all about documents moving around, but also complex, because it's more about how these characters use deflection and misdirection to keep their opponents—and, sometimes, the audience—confused.

On the surface, it might even come across as thematically simplistic, until one considers that the whole thing is founded in broad distrust in certain systems. The paranoia, desperation, and helplessness of the characters reflects that larger sentiment.

Some of these characters have good reason to be paranoid, too. The film opens with a mysterious meeting between two unlikely people, an ordinary man named Hoffman (Matthew Maher) and a besuited man with a fancy SUV and a chauffeur named McVie (Victor Garber), at a small diner in New York City.

Their exchange is concise, with the former passing documents to the latter, but takes a slightly philosophical turn when Hoffman is surprised to find whom he believes to be the embodiment of evil to be so mundane. They leave separately, and as it appears that Hoffman is being tailed by two men, another man follows that pair with a keen eye, as if he expects them to do something to Hoffman.

The premise here is somewhat ingenious, both in terms of its specifics and its general conceit. The man following the tailing turns out to be an independent negotiator of sorts. He's known by various names throughout the story, but we'll call him John, which is the first one the man gives in the film. He's played by Riz Ahmed with quiet intelligence and laser-like focus, because the man needs those qualities above any others for his work.

As it turns out, John is a broker, serving as the middleman for potential whistleblowers like Hoffman, who discovered that the pharmaceutical company he worked for was falsifying the results of testing for a new drug, and McVie, the CEO of that company. The setup is cynical to its very core, by taking as a given that a major company, with millions or billions of dollars to protect, would do anything and everything to protect its bottom line. As noble as a wannabe whistleblower's intentions may be, there must come a breaking point, after an extended campaign of company-sanctioned harassment and threats, for even the most righteous.

That's when, where, and why John steps into the picture. When someone with damaging information can no longer take the abuse, he negotiates a deal with the company. They pay and promise to stop terrorizing the now-finished informant, and the victim of that targeted campaign hands over the damning documentation, save for an insurance copy that John keeps in case the company breaks their end of the deal.

The plot of director David Mackenzie's film starts in earnest with a new whistleblower who has had a change of heart. She's Sarah (Lily James), who helped an agricultural conglomerate develop a genetically modified strain of wheat. The company has covered up the likely side effects of that grain, and after a series of harassing calls and noticing people watching her every move and someone sets her car on fire, Sarah has had enough. She gets in contact with John to arrange an agreement with her former employer.

As for the execution of this plot, it is quite inventive. The script combines contemporary technology as prevalent as cellphones, especially those of the "burner" variety, and longstanding systems as commonplace as the postal service (standing as long, of course, as the corporate interests like the villains here will allow it to, it increasingly seems) into a complex, intentionally convoluted web. After accepting Sarah as a client, John has her set off on a string of seemingly random tasks, from flying to specific airports to mailing those documents to towns out west. It makes some sense, since a shadowy team, led by Dawson (Sam Worthington), is keeping tabs on and trailing Sarah's every move.

The process is best described and watched as an elaborate game, in which two parties, each of whom knows what the other wants and does, attempt to get ahead of each other in some way or ways that are quite satisfying to gradually comprehend. The film allows the characters to be clever, such as in the way John exploits the telephone relay service—for callers who are deaf of hearing impaired, in which text inputs are communicated back and forth without any trace or record—for his business.

Whether or not the accuracy of the portrayal of these systems or the plot itself holds up to scrutiny is almost irrelevant. Piasecki makes a convincing case that all of these procedures are right, at least as necessary for the spirit of a maze-like thriller, and Mackenzie keeps assembling the pieces of this puzzle with enough momentum to prevent us from asking too many questions about them. All the while, Ahmed and James offer performances that get at how lonely it is for these characters to be up against the world without anyone to genuinely trust.

To be sure, the screenplay contrives exactly one twist too many, at which point we can't help but question several aspects of the plotting. Even so, Relay arrives at that unfortunate misstep with a lot of collective goodwill, so it's hard to hold that error in judgment too much against the rest of what's otherwise a well-constructed thriller with some novel details and relevant ideas.

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