Earlier this fall at TIFF my choice for my last film came down to seeing either David Mackenzie’s Relay or Angelina Jolie’s Without Blood. I have a hard time believing I made the wrong choice with Mackenzie’s tense thriller.
While Heretic provided the most thrills of my stay in Toronto, Relay serves plenty in an energetic throwback to ’70s psychological thrillers. And then, the train slides off the tracks after barreling ahead at full speed for the first 80 minutes.
In a sublime intro sequence, Makenzie creates this dense atmosphere of paranoia and intrigue as he opens the world for Riz Ahmed to enter. It takes what seems like at least 20 minutes for him to even speak, with Ahmed proving yet again after his incredible turn in Sound of Metal that he is one of the best physical talents in the game.
It’s not just to use Ahmed’s skills, but to place the audience in the perspective of his clients as a fixer for potential whistleblowers who never meet or hear him because he uses a relay phone service to communicate.
He’s shown to be incredibly effective and knows every turn and trick his new adversaries will use to stop him from protecting his clients. That is, until he starts getting emotions with a new client, Lily James, who has vital information about wrongdoing from a pharmaceutical company.
With neither sharing the screen until late developments, James and Ahmed have remarkable chemistry even with an intermediary between them. Certainly a credit to Mackenzie and editor Matt Mayer, who find nice shortcuts to reduce communication time, taking advantage of patterns to speak with the audience.
Trying to foil James’ planned escape with Ahmed’s help, Sam Worthington is one of Big Pharma’s henchman, once again proving he should be better employed beyond Avatar. Ahmed brings silent precision and charm, and James brings vulnerability. Worthington brings visceral intensity that truly helps move along a story that would otherwise be a lot of typing and pauses in conversation.
Those pauses fade away with time and Mackenzie ramps up the velocity, smoothly rolling into new scenes with Tony Doogan’s electric (and at times soothing) score.
But hiccups start to creep in as Mackenzie and freshman screenwriter Justin Piasecki start to take bigger bites, unable to reach the peaks they set earlier. It’s like going to a Yankees game and seeing Aaron Judge hit a home run in the 9th inning to tie the game, but the final ending ends with a Clay Holmes double play. They end up winning in the end on a nice double play but there’s still a lingering wish that all of that drama could have been avoided.
If that’s the worst critique someone can throw at it, Mackenzie has a certified winner on his hands. It’s just about everything you could ask of a thriller and then some for better or worse (mostly better.)
