Relay review – Riz Ahmed is a fixer on a mission in a throwback thriller

Toronto film festival: Hell or High Water’s David Mackenzie attempts to recall 70s paranoid thrillers in a sleek, suspenseful watch before it makes a wrong turn

In the wrong, or maybe just less right, hands, the set-up of pacy thriller Relay could have been the set-up for a standard-issue network pilot. A nifty fixer, who finds unique and unexpected ways to assist reluctant whistleblowers as they hand back damning documents, feels like a character who could lead multiple seasons of a solid, if stodgy, NBC drama. But the Scottish writer-director David Mackenzie, whose primary credits include Starred Up and Hell or High Water, is aiming a little higher, something closer to the paranoia and laser focus of 70s and 80s thrillers like The Conversation and Blow Out (something he has made reference to in early press).

When that remains the aim, along with co-writer Justin Piasecki, he does a pretty sterling job at paying homage while avoiding pastiche. His fixer is Ash, played by Riz Ahmed, a man fading into the background, going about his work in New York, avoiding identification, living the life of a ghost. His latest client is food industry employee Sarah, played by 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.

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