(The editor’s note: This review was originally published during Toronto International 2024 Film Festival. Bleecker Street releases ”Relay“In the theater Friday 22 August)
Sharp, funny and smart entertaining from their first scene to his last twist, David Mackenzie’s “Relay” is an old -fashioned movie about an old -fashioned guy. The film is a modern paranoid thriller as the harrow back to the genre’s 70s heyday (although far newer ”Michael Clayton“May be the most obvious reference point). The guy is an alcoholic Muslim named Ash (a sad and glossy Rice AhmedFantastic in the whole), which became a Renegade business broker after drinking away a more conventional life.
His warehouse-in-trading is whistle-he works to keep them safe from the companies that want them dead. His methods are analog – Ash communicates exclusively with brave clients and evil conglomerates both through one Call-to-text-relay Designed to help deaf people make default phone calls. No one ever hears his voice or learns their name; He ends up a message in his teleprinter, and a team of very confused (but unmatched professional) operators then speaks to the person at the other end of the line. How to connect him $ 500,000. “Go ahead.” Where to leave the Hyper-Inriminating documents. “Go ahead.” Which newspapers he sends them to if the company’s goons do not follow. “Go ahead.” That kind of thing. It is a digital world, but Ash can hide in vision.
In fact, Ash is so hard-caught that it’s something of a cat-and-mouse game just for rent him, even less to surpass him. During much of the first half of “Relay”, where he works to protect a frazzled new client named Sarah (Lily James) while trying to throw a biotechnology konglomed death body from her tail, it seems as if he is equally busy staying hidden from both sides of the deal; There is a terribly playful sequence where Ash donates the first of his many disguises to lead the rest of the role on a wild goose hunt to Pittsburgh and back.
Of course, the real faith of our hero is no mystery, although Sarah may think she is unworthy for her protection. When she learned that her employer’s new wheat stem has cancer side effects, she stole the paperwork that proved it. But when the company sent a crew to scare her to return them (a team of memorable faces led by a knit-sam worthington, which gives the role that is much more personality than it require Back-it’s Ash’s job to ensure that she will keep her life at the end of their constant surveillance and agreed to give the evidence back-it is Ash’s job to ensure that she will keep her life at the end.
It really is all there is, but Justin Piasecki’s knotted script absolutely likes in Ash’s work, and in the game that makes Worthington’s crew so eager to sniff him out and snap his leverage. There is a tangible self -insurance against how this story allows the opponents to circle each other like a couple of sharks, both of which are hungry after the same meal, and “relay” grows all the more convincing about how it reverses a rich main character from his appetite.
Unaware that he can try to be (even in AA meetings where he goes under a false name) Ash is easily identifiable for his loneliness. It is a loneliness crystallized by Rusan from the city around him, as the same habit of allowing him to be brokers business between strangers makes it so much harder for him to form meaningful connections. Mackenzie sharpens both sides of the double -edged sword by shooting the streets of New York with a degree of geographical allegiance that is almost unmatched in the films today, when the action extends from the heart of Times Square to the intestines in the city hall (which is basically unknown in the films in Times Square, but alliteration forbids me to use a better example), “relay” does not fake any of its places, and so you always feel that this is just one of eight million stories told over the naked city at every given moment.
It is difficult to hold on to someone in a place that is so full of people, and although “relay” may not be the deepest of texts, it shows a great understanding of how powerful it can be for someone to cut through the noise and offer their help (it says Ash’s only friend is his sponsor and “friend” can be a generous word for it). In essence, it is the service ASH provides its customers, and-when we start to gather from the way he smiles against Sarah through the floor-to-ceiling window in her Tribeca SafeHouse, he is desperately after his latest client to return the advantage. It is a bit incredible how fast she starts to fantasize what his face can look like and things like it, but it’s all part of the charm of history, and the movie knows what it is.
David Mackenzie Movies usually do. A single traveling that never makes the same movie twiceMackenzie Has Directed A Shatter Prison Drama (“Starred Up”), An Oscar-Nominated Neo-Western (“Hell or High Water”), and a Medieval Epic (“Outlaw King”) in the Last 11 Years Alone, and the Only Readily Identifiable Commonal Commonal Isolation – Often in the midst of chaos – and the visceral intelligence of their construction, which he will brow to the surface even though it means to tip with a project after his festival debut. It can be argued that he has a semi -consumer tendency to rely on fluid and quickly on handheld cameras, but Mackenzie’s attitude to style is always subordinate to the story he tells.
Example: “Relay” is shot with a cool and sloppy confidence that allows it to emphasize the readability of its site without making any of its moving parts for obvious, and while the film leaves all kinds of “cool” points on the table so as not to strive for a more aggressively stylized aesthetic, Mackenzies Down-and-dirt, the movie second in full view of the stage. Like Ash, the movie is arresting and invisible at once. In addition, the action shows the action of all, that all satisfactory flourisers would have felt too much like gilding the lily.
Smooth but vulnerable, smart but anonymous, desperately after provoking a human response but willing to do what it takes to get the job done, “relay” is not out to set the world in fire, it just wants to be a handmade thriller who communicates a real sense of personal investments in a time when companies would rather kill a one to be a business. Occasional whistleblower than saving lives for 1,000 customers, and it goes to a real feeling. David Mackenzie will never make another movie like this of course, but in the unlikely case, the idea crosses his mind that I would only have one thing to say in response: move on.
Rating: B+
“Relay” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2024.
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