August 28, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by David Mackenzie
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City and in New Jersey, the dramatic film “Relay” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some people of Middle Eastern heritage and a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A mysterious loner, who works as a broker in financial settlements from corrupt companies, who uses a relay phone service for disabled people and finds himself getting personally involved with a whistleblower who has damaging information about a data provider company.
Culture Audience: “Relay” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in well-acted thrillers about people fighting a corrupt system.
“Relay” has plenty of suspense and intrigue in this drama about a secretive broker of corrupt companies’ financial settlements and how he gets personally involved with a client. The movie goes a bit off the rails with a plot twist that’s hard to believe. Despite any flaws in the screenplay, the principal cast members carry the movie with their engaging performances.
Directed by David Mackenzie and written by Justin Piasecki, “Relay” had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The movie was filmed on location in New York City and in New Jersey, where the story takes place. It’s the type of movie where viewers should be paying attention to certain details, particularly in the beginning of the movie, in order to fully understand the plot twisty.
“Relay” begins by showing a transaction taking place in a New York City diner. A man named Hoffman (played by Matthew Maher) nervously enters the diner because he’s there to hand over a file of paperwork to someone. The person he’s meeting a corporate executive named McVie (played by Victor Garber), who has the smug and arrogant attitude of someone who’s accustomed to getting his way in life.
Before he hands over the file, Hoffman says to McVie about meeting McView in person: “I thought I’d get to see what evil really looks like, but you look like anyone else.” Hoffman gives the file to McVie and tells McVie that Hoffman’s representatives have a copy of the paperwork. Hoffman warns McVie that if anything happens to Hoffman, law enforcement will get a copy of the paperwork.
Hoffman then asks McVie to take a photo with him. McVie obliges this request and then leaaves. What is going on here? It’s later revealed McVie is an executive from Optimo Pharmaceuticals, and Hoffman is a whistleblower who handed over a phamaceutical report that had damning evidence about the company’s corruption. In exchange, Hoffman was paid a secret financial settlement.
The person who brokered this deal is someone whose name isn’t revealed until the last third of the movie. His name is Ash (played by Riz Ahmed), an enigmatic loner who works as a broker between corrupt companies that want to pay secret financial settlements to whistleblowers. Ash is not an attorney. His personal background information is revealed later in the movie.
After the paperwork exchange between Hoffman and McVie, Ash follows Hoffman through Grand Central Station. To disguise himself from anyone who might be following Ash, Ash changes his clothes from looking like a public transit worker to an everyday guy wearing a hooded sweatshirt and baseball cap.
When Ash goes back to the dingy apartment where he lives and works, he gets a phone call from an unidentified man who says: “We have the report back. You’ve been paid for your services. As long as Hoffman sticks to his side of the deal, we’re done. And by the way, message from my boss: ‘You’re parasitic scum.'”
Meanwhile, a research scientist named Sarah Grant (played by Lily James) has an in-person consultation meeting at the office of a New York City attorney named Mr. Morel (played by Seth Barrish) to see if he would be interested in taking her employee whistleblower case. Sarah explains that she was a senior research scientist at a St. Louis-based data provider company named Cybo Sementis, where she worked for almost 10 years.
Sarah worked on a team that was developing a new wheat strain resistant to insect predation, through precision breeding. The team noticed possible human food data issues and dangerous side effects. Sarah raised these issues with the company’s senior management. As a result, she was demoted and eventually fired.
Sarah took evidence of the company’s corruption and still has this evidence. Mr. Morel says that if she took any company records without consent, it could be considered theft. Sarah says she’s aware of this, which is why she wants to return the evidence in exchange for a confidential financial settlement with Cybo Sementis. Mr. Morel says his law firm wouldn’t be able to take a case, but he knows of “unofficial channels” that can settle this matter.
Mr. Morel gives Sarah a phone number to an anonymous answering service that turns out to be the way to contact Ash. In order to keep his identity and any phone conversations that he as untraceable as possible, Ash uses the Tri-State Relay Service, a call center for hearing-impaired, nonverbal, or have other disabilities. At the Tri-State Relay Service, telephone agents speak words that a caller types out on a screen.
The Tri-State Relay Service has a privacy policy to not record or document the phone calls that come through the company’s call center. And the people who use the relay service are guaranteed confidentiality. Ash is not disabled but her uses the relay service so he doesn’t have to have his voice (disguised or undisguised) heard by the people he’s communicating with on the phone .
A great deal of “Relay” is about the conversations that Ash and Sarah have using Tri-State Relay Service. Ash establishes some rules early on his conversations with Sarah. His number one rule is to obey his orders exactly, no matter how strange the orders might be. It’s all very “cloak and dagger” but Ash has reasons to believe that all of he and his whistleblower clients should be paranoid.
Sarah is constantly being followed by a shady group of four people who appear to work for Cybo Sementis: Dawson (played by Sam Worthington), the group’s leader, sometimes acts like he’s a law enforcement official when he tries to get information. The other people in the group are Rosetti (played by Willa Fitzgerald), Ryan (played by Jared Abrahamson) and Lee (played by Pun Bandhu), who all use various tactics to keep tabs on Sarah. This quartet also seems to want to undermine Ash.
“Relay” has a “race against time” aspect because Cybo Sementis is on the verge of being acquired. The company is valued at $3.2 billion. Needless to say, the company is under intense pressure to squash any negative information before this sale. Sarah’s evidence is damaging enough to permanently ruin Cybo Sementis.
There are many unanswered questions about Ash with only a few details given during the course of the movie. One of them is that he goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His AA sponsor is a woman named Wash (played Eisa Davis), who helps him when he’s going through some tough moments.
Ash has a rule to not get emotionally involved with his clients. But over time, he becomes very attracted to Sarah. There are early signs of this attraction when Ash keeps looking at the dating app where Sarah has a profile, and he checks her social media to see what kind of social life that she has.
“Relay” can get a little repetitive and dragged-out over this document exchange. The movie stretches the plot because the settlement negotiations (with Dawson as the negotiator for Cybo Sementis) are difficult. The terms of the settlement keep changing. Ahmed and Lily are the obvious standout cast members, because the relationship between Ash and Sarah is the driving force of the story.
When “Relay” is at its best, the performances, editing and cinematography elevate the movie. The plot twist doesn’t ruin the film but it does seem like a twist that’s very contrived and brings up questions that “Relay” doesn’t bother to answer. However, up until this point, “Relay” delivers as a tension-filled thriller that has a lot to say about the dirty business of white-collar corruption.
Bleecker Street released “Relay” in U.S. cinemas on August 22, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on August 11, 1025.
