Remember when Hollywood served up clever, mid-budget thrillers that didn’t need explosions every fifteen minutes? Relay is a delicious throwback to that golden era—the kind of film that would have earned cult status on video store shelves between Alan J. Pakula’s The Pelican Brief and Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor. Director David Mackenzie, who gave us the masterful Hell or High Water, delivers another carefully calibrated slow-burn that reminds us why theatrical experiences still matter. It’s lean, sharp, and a little radical in its simplicity.

With today’s cinematic landscape oversaturated with bloated franchise entries and hyperactive streaming filler, Relay feels like a minor miracle: a self-contained mystery for grown-ups. No cinematic universe. No backdoor pilot for a sequel. Just a tight 112-minute story that hooks you early and never wastes your time. It opens like a puzzle and unspools with precision, powered by a premise that feels ingeniously modern.

Justin Piasecki’s screenplay, which deservedly landed on the 2019 Black List, follows Ash (Riz Ahmed, Encounter), a shadowy broker who negotiates delicate arrangements between whistleblowers and corporations desperate to silence them. His operation hinges on anonymity—no faces, no names, just voices filtered through relay services and carefully orchestrated dead drops. It’s a setup that sounds almost absurd until you see how efficiently he runs it. His life is clean, compartmentalized, and completely impersonal—until it isn’t.

When Sarah (Lily James, The Iron Claw) contacts him after stealing damning documents about genetically modified grain with lethal side effects, Ash’s professional detachment, which has been maintained through layers of digital remove, begins to crack. Desperate and out of her depth, she’s not just another client. She’s someone whose genuine terror seeps through their indirect communications, making him question his cardinal rule about emotional investment. What unfolds is a chess match between Ash and a corporate security team led by Dawson (Sam Worthington, The Exorcism) and Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald, Strange Darling), where each move carries life-or-death consequences.

Ahmed doesn’t speak for the first thirty minutes, yet he tells us everything through controlled movement and calculating eyes that flicker with something human underneath. This is a man who knows exactly how much risk is in every step—and who still might take one too many. When the mask slips late in the film, it’s not with a grand reveal but with a monologue delivered so quietly and honestly that it rattles more than any explosion could. Ahmed delivers what might be his finest performance since his Oscar-nominated turn in Sound of Metal, finding vulnerability beneath layers of professional armor.

James, meanwhile, takes a character that could’ve been standard issue and proves equally effective as Sarah. Her panic doesn’t always translate into smarts, but her desperation feels authentically human. There’s a moment when her fear mutates into guilt and then resolve, and James lands it with messy authenticity. Her occasional missteps feel genuine rather than plot-convenient—a woman out of her depth but learning to swim in dangerous waters.

The beauty of Relay lies in its patient construction—Mackenzie allows tension to build through small gestures and meaningful silences, rather than relying on manufactured action sequences often used to oversell the thriller elements. The relay service itself becomes both a plot device and a metaphor for modern disconnection, where intimacy exists only through technological barriers. Cinematographer Giles Nuttgens nods toward paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, such as Pakula’s The Parallax View or Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (a film Relay shares some DNA strands with), using harsh light and wide urban spaces to create tension without chaos. There’s a particularly sharp set-piece in Times Square that chooses choreography over spectacle.

The supporting cast shines throughout. The marvelous Eisa Davis (Ex-Husbands) brings warmth to her brief appearance as an AA group member. I also liked seeing Matthew Maher (Live by Night) and Victor Garber (Titanic) set the tone off the bat in a pre-credit sequence you’ll want to pay close attention to. The real MVPs might be the well-cast relay service operators, creating moments that are oddly chilling and darkly funny, delivering lines of coded urgency with just the right note of bureaucratic detachment. They’re not just narrative tools—they help build the film’s oddly plausible world.

Where Relay does falter, slightly, is in its final act. After so much elegant restraint, the conclusion nudges into more conventional territory, accelerating the pace just enough to feel rushed. The reveal works, even if it’s a hair too tidy, and some narrative threads remain frustratingly loose. The film’s simplicity might disappoint viewers expecting labyrinthine plotting. Yet these flaws pale in comparison to the film’s considerable strengths. Still, the film sticks its landing by staying true to its tone—calm, clever, and controlled.

Having seen Relay twice now—once at TIFF and again ahead of its theatrical release—I’m impressed by how lean and well-calibrated it remains. What lingers isn’t the twist or action, but the feeling that Relay respects its audience. It doesn’t over-explain or dumb things down. It trusts that we’ll catch on to Ash’s system of dead drops and logistical sleight-of-hand. When things escalate, it moves like a puzzle snapping together, maybe a few pieces bent but none missing.

Relay succeeds because it understands that effective suspense stems from character investment, not flash for the sake of sparks. It offers something increasingly rare: a complete, satisfying theatrical experience that doesn’t require prior knowledge or promises of resolution in future installments. It’s the kind of film that would have been a reliable Friday night rental in the ’90s, and in 2024, that feels downright revolutionary. We used to have more movies like this—thrillers that felt grown-up without being self-serious, that gave us tension without trauma. Sometimes all you want is a great 112-minute thriller and a bucket of popcorn. This one delivers both.