Almost Across the Line
Who’s the fool that said there was no more need for the postal service?
Relay
Director: David Mackenzie • Writers: David Mackenzie, Justin Piasecki
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald
USA • 1hr 52mins
Opens Hong Kong September 18 • IIA
Grade: B-
How often do you hear someone talk about how white-knuckle tense and totally engrossing it was to watch characters in a movie go to the post office? I’ll wait… Yeah, uh-huh, that’s right. Never. But contrary to all logical, erm, logic that’s exactly what happens in Relay, a low-key, methodically paced thriller about a fixer for regretful whistleblowers, Ash (Riz Ahmed), who, uses a million tech toys and, yes, the United States Postal Service’s mail forwarding rules as a thrilling plot device. Okay, he doesn’t; director and co-writers David Mackenzie and Justin Piasecki do, but you catch my meaning. It sounds bananas, but it truly works – and it works much better than the “I’m lonely and lovelorn” elements that pop up later when Ash helps food plant biogeneticist (how futuristic) Sarah Grant (Lily James) get herself out of a mess of her own doing. Ahmed can do this kind of retiring, standoff-ish, paranoid in his sleep (Exhibit A: The Night Of) and he’s somehow made the process of phantom dead drops and three times removed pay-offs look like premium tradecraft as well as a giant middle finger to psychopathic corporations. It’s oddly compelling viewing for 90-odd minutes, which makes its collapse into mawkishness and cut-rate action so disappointing. Dammit, just give us more four-step authentications.
Typing… typing… excitement?
Mackenzie has flirted with this kind of anti-corporate before, specifically in the excellent Hell or High Water, so he knows his way around making financial, boardroom-based shenanigans engaging, and like David Fincher did in The Social Network he manages to make typing edge-of-your-seat dramatic. Relay starts with a nervous, would-be whistleblower, Hoffman (reliable That Guy Matthew Mahar) meeting the slick CEO of a pharmaceutical behemoth (Victor Garber, so you know shit has the potential to go seriously sideways) in a Manhattan diner one night. He wants to give back documents he stole while employed by Garber’s firm, documents that prove it tampered with the data in a clinical trial in order to get stinking rich. The new drug is deadly. Anyway, he’s going to shut up and mind his business if the company will just knock it off with the threats and harassment. It’s Ash’s job to anonymously broker a truce that includes a kills switch – a copy of the data already addressed to key media in case of the aforementioned sideways – get everyone paid, and get Hoffman out of town. His next client is Sarah, in a similar position and being shadowed by some muscle for the food engineering company she just got fired from for speaking up about food safety. She comes to Ash with the same request: Help her give them back their damning report and get the muscle – team leader Dawson (Sam Worthington, not in blue Avatar mocap), Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald, with way less to do than in Strange Darling), and their back-up, Ryan and Lee – off her ass. But the solitary Ash starts to genuinely connect with the frazzled Sarah, and – alert the media – his emotions throw him off his game.
And that’s Relay’s fatal flaw. Mackenzie, Piasecki and Ahmed put so much time and effort into Ash’s meticulously constructed series of, yup, relays designed to outsmart corrupt but well-equipped corporate types – which involve telephone services for the hard of hearing, postal tracking, double flight bookings, trains to Poughkeepsie, countless burner phones and following his exacting rules precisely – and it’s such a kick to watch and so satisfying when he gets over on the bad guys that as soon as he and Sarah start making invisible goo-goo eyes at each other it just gets in the way. Of course, we kind of know it’s coming; it’s a movie and she’s a pretty white girl. On top of which Ash’s AA buddy Wash (Eisa Davis) is a cop, so you know the actual law is getting involved at some point. Relay succumbs to its worst instincts in Act III and it’s a shame, because for most of its run time it’s the kind of clever, modern thriller The Amateur probably wanted to be but didn’t have the leading man for, or the blatant glee at the idea of some chaos. It’s just too bad movies are still convinced the idea that Little Mr/Miss/Ms/Other Lonely Hearts finding love is a good enough reason to torpedo a perfectly good story about naming and shaming a Fortune 500 company. And really, any movie that can weaponise the post office is worth a look.