Relay (15) |Close-Up Film Review

The ever busy Riz Ahmed is on screen for most of the time – but doesn’t say a word until some considerable way into the film.  

He plays  Ash, a “fixer” – someone who brokers secret deals between corrupt corporations and whistleblowers who threaten them. 

Nobody knows who he is because all transactions are conducted via the relay system of the title.  Originally created to help hearing- and speech-impaired people communicate on the phone, Ash types into a keyboard connected to his phone, an anonymous operator voices his words to the client and the client’s response to him. Ash controls every detail, nobody hears his voice, he cannot be identified.  And it pays well, not that he’s a big spender or indeed does anything that would draw attention to himself. 

But then he is contacted by Sarah Grant (Lily James) a scientist, who has evidence of her employer’s wrong doing, is being threatened by them and needs protection and help in returning the evidence.  Under Ash’s instructions, Sarah goes into hiding but she is still being pursued by her former employer’s heavy mob, led by a scary and resourceful thug named Dawson (Sam Worthington).

We learn very little about Ash, who is pretty much a loner.  We discover he is a non-drinking alcoholic, who is friends with a woman he has met at AA meetings.  In one scene he meets up with a deaf friend.   Was this the man who introduced him to the relay system?  Don’t know as they communicate by signing! 

Eventually Ash is drawn out of his anonymous isolation, when he meets Sarah in the flesh and we are tempted to hope for a romantic connection.   But with Dawson and his heavies on the trail, the last part of the film moves into a tense game of cat and mouse during a concert in New York’s town hall, after which it explodes into full on car chase and gunplay action.

Ahmed is excellent as always – quiet, intense, suggesting a whole unknown and turbulent history  beneath his calm exterior, while James makes an appealing damsel in distress, who also has hidden depths.  All making for an original and unusual thriller, driven by an absorbing and intriguing central character.