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Moving Pictures
Aug 15, 2025, 06:27AM

The Anxiety of Modernity

Relay is a fine, small film, but it can only do so much and reach so many people.

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An unspoken dilemma that’s faced the latest generation of up-and-coming filmmakers is a fear of modernity. Given the complexities brought upon by technology, rapidly fluctuating news events, and potentially divisive politics, genre films have avoided direct parallels to reality. It’s easier for a period piece like Nosferatu to build an expensive recreation of the 19th century than it is for Wolf Man to justify why cell phones wouldn’t be used to record video of a lycanthrope. If this year’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps showed the merit of a superhero film grounded in a retro-futuristic aesthetic, then the disastrous Trump-allusions in Captain America: Brave New World showed the danger of misjudged timeliness.

Relay is inspired by the style and tone of the New Hollywood era: the shadowy corporate speak is derived from The Parallax View, and the anxiety-filled phone calls could’ve been lifted shot-for-shot from The Conversation. This isn’t the attempt to revitalize the 1970s era of conspiracy thrillers, as Hollywood’s reliance on nostalgia has ensured that any popular subgenre is bound to have a resurgence. However, there’s a contextual difference that has made modern political thrillers more difficult to accept; 1970s films were directly tied to the aftermath of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the series of assassinations that heightened fringe conspiracy beliefs. The Candidate didn’t have to say the name “Ted Kennedy” to serve as a warning about the appointment of the young heir to a political dynasty.

The biggest challenge faced by Relay is that a relatively small film would never be able to use actual brands, contemporary figures, or recent controversies, since that would require a budget and timeliness that isn’t possible for an independent production; Relay was still a self-financed film that was purchased by Bleecker Street at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Those willing to suspend their disbelief may find Relay to be an engrossing chase film with a surprising amount of old-fashioned craftsmanship. If it weren’t for a twist ending inserted purely for shock value, Relay may have been able to kick off a new era of globalist stealth thrillers.

Riz Ahmed is Ash, a Michael Clayton-esque “fixer” who’s tasked with the management of payoffs given to corrupt corporations, but Relay is quick to establish that he isn’t an anti-hero. A veteran with PTDS and a few outreach options, Ash is forced to use his surveillance and infiltration skills for the only employer willing to unleash him. While he’s been abandoned by the nation that he once fought to protect, Ash is now employed by a shadowy group of capitalist hawks, represented by the brutal enforcers Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald) and Dawson (Sam Worthington). Ash doesn’t think about the ethical compromises he’s been forced to make, but his future’s altered when he’s given responsibility for the management of whistleblower Sarah Grant (Lily James), who’s come forward with potentially disruptive information about one of his clients.

The specifics of Sarah’s discovery are purposefully left vague, which is both a component of realism and a strong dramatic choice. It’d be absurd to suggest that a powerless employee of a massive company would single-handedly obtain secrets that could burn it to the ground, but Sarah is also a more interesting character because her realization was inadvertent. Relay’s strongest argument is that the paranoia that surrounded the American government in films like All the President’s Men or The China Syndrome has been replaced by the unspoken power of conglomerates to assert their own justice. Dawson and Rosetti aren’t sworn to abide by the laws of the Constitution, but they’re also aware that any members of law enforcement would look in the other direction if their employer was to conduct any malicious activity.

The union of urgency and hopelessness is critical to Relay, as Sarah and Ash are characters burdened by their information. The film isn’t idealistic enough to suggest that the revelation of business secrets would radically change either of their lives, as their only hope is that enough headlines would be generated for them not to disappear. Although Relay really only needed to be a game of cat-and-mouse to engage with these ideas, Ahmed is the type of actor who can elevate the material.

Director David Mackenzie has a strong record with straightforward genre films that are grounded in anti-establishment sentiments. Hell or High Water was a brilliant neo-western about the domination of reverse mortgages, Starred Up was a prison drama about the collapse of the family unit, and Outlaw King was a war epic about the Scottish people’s history of subjugation. Relay is rarely as inflammatory, but its plain-spoken admission that the system is broken is just as powerful.

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