FILM REVIEW
RELAY
Rated R
112 Minutes
Released August 22nd
This movie plays like a chess game, mentally and physically – on foot and through an unusual phone device. The film’s name, Relay, refers to a call center that is instrumental in this fast-paced thriller. In the call center, phone calls are effectively “laundered.” Caller and location, once routed through the center, will be unknown to the receiver of the call and to anyone in the public. Once heard by the designated receiver, the whole conversation goes into that proverbial basket of “never happened.”
The story is based on a laudable premise, involving a less-than-ethical corporation worth billions, and a whistleblower, played here by Lily James, who now must hide herself and incriminating documents from corporate retribution. A mysterious man named “Ash,” played by Riz Ahmed, enters the picture to protect and hide her until the evidence can be brought to court.
The two must outwit their competition, a team sent by the corporation to retrieve the top-secret documents and destroy them. Ash uses ingenious yet technologically simple devices to aid his quest for his client’s safety until she can pass the legally devastating paperwork to the authorities. But the plot won’t go where you think it will.
Ash uses a textphone, a device for the deaf and hard of hearing, to keep the corporate team from accessing his communications. The call relay service he uses, the Telecommunications Relay Service, or TRS, is a real service established to assist people with hearing or speech disabilities in placing and receiving telephone calls.
As part of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the service forbids its operators from disclosing any information about the calls that pass through their station. There are no records kept of the contents of any conversation, leaving calls virtually untraceable. Thus, Ash’s digital footprint cannot be tracked, protecting his witnesses and keeping his activities hidden. Each TRS associate must stay on the call a minimum of 10 minutes, and they always begin each call with the line, “Hello, this is the relay service.”
Writer Justin Piasecki has built a unique and elaborate plot around the TRS call center. Piasecki grew up in Iowa, where his Dad worked for John Deere. He has been writing since he was a teen, and got his first job in his town library, where he was assigned to rebook the “Westerns” section. After college, he began working at jobs in the entertainment industry. Relay is his first major feature credit as a writer.
Director David MacKenzie is at the beginning of a stellar career if his future projects match the expertise of his first two. Mackenzie directed and was the music supervisor of the acclaimed 2016 film Hell or High Water, starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, which showcased his edginess, sensitivity, and willingness to take chances. Relay reflects his promise and skill as well. Music plays a pivotal role in both films. MacKenzie shot Relay in one month, in parts of Manhattan and New Jersey where the story unfolds.
Ahmed is a thinking actor, not “just another pretty face,” as they say in the industry. Here, he brings a fascinating, deep, and introverted character to life as Ash, who assists people in legal trouble using technology associated with the deaf community. In 2019, Ahmed’s starring role in The Sound of Metal followed the highly emotional experience of a punk rock drummer losing his hearing. He was the first ever Muslim actor to be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for that performance.
Ahmed grew up in London, the son of a Filipino father and an Egyptian mother, and until the age of five, the only language he spoke was Urdu. He began his career as a hip hop artist, “Riz MC.” In an alternate version of his life, he graduated from Oxford University with degrees in philosophy and economics. His existence in three worlds at once in the 1990s – a working-class home, intense education, and the underground rave scene-gave him the ability to switch between identities.
Of his role in The Sound of Metal, he said, “I feel the deaf community in New York taught me the true meaning of listening.” Ahmed helped write one scene in Relay, which plays out in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And an unplanned and unnerving real-life situation happened just as the shoot began. He and his wife and six-week-old child were relocating across the country, and their moving van was robbed of their possessions. Ahmed noted that this gave him a more vivid understanding of Ash’s loneliness.
This is a perfect movie for mystery lovers who like to figure things out. But it’s not simply a whodunit thriller. Thanks to Ahmed’s fine performance, Ash’s personality, strengths and weaknesses, fears and goals, flaws and goodness, are gradually revealed, until you are honestly rooting for him in the end. Ahmed says, “…what we make also makes us – ideally, people who are freer and more capable of sharing life. But when the work is done, all bets are OFF. There are no promises.” This sums up the movie.
Relay did not receive a lot of marketing hype prior to its release. I predict it will be one of the best “sleeper” films of the year, a work that will gain publicity by word of mouth and will be celebrated during awards season.
Kathryn Whitney Boole has spent most of her life in the entertainment industry, which has been the backdrop for remarkable adventures with extraordinary people. She is a Talent Manager with Studio Talent Group in Santa Monica. kboole@gmail.com
