Relay (15)

A nifty ‘70s throwback thriller in the vein of The Conversation, Relay offers a fresh new take on the conspiracy sub-genre.

Riz Ahmed is Ash, a “fixer” who assists whistleblowers. He’s going about his work in New York, avoiding identification, living the life of a ghost. His latest client is food industry employee Sarah (Lily James) who uncovered potentially ruinous information that she impulsively made a copy of yet now, after increasingly alarming harassment, she has decided to return. This requires him to act as intermediary, sensitively communicating between the two parties to ensure safety.

Ash communicates with Sarah via a company called The Tri-State Messenger Service that mediates for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The beauty of this is that calls are confidential, and Sarah soon falls into step with Ash’s strange way of doing business. He is, however, a logistical genius and master of disguise, which comes in handy when a team of tech-savvy heavies, led by Sam Worthington, stake out Sarah’s apartment in a sinister black van. The film channels early Brian de Palma and Hitchcock to create a visceral thriller