Movie Review: RELAY

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 23rd, 2025 / 03:17 AM

RELAY movie poster | ©2025 Bleecker Street

Rating: R
Stars: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Jared Abramson, Pun Bandhu, Eisa Davis, Matthew Maher, Victor Garber
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Director: David Mackenzie
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Release Date: August 22, 2025

RELAY features a device that was much more common in pre-Internet days but is still around now. Known as a TTY machine, it is used primarily by deaf people to communicate with others. If the TTY callers are both deaf, they both use the TTY. However, if one of the callers is hearing but doesn’t understand sign language and/or does not have access to a keyboard, they can go through a relay system.

Some relay calls use human interpreters who, via video, translate sign language to spoken word and vice-versa. These do not use TTY at all.

This is relevant to RELAY because the TTY is used by a hearing person (Riz Ahmed) to disguise his identity. Our protagonist, who calls himself John (not his real name) in the AA meetings he attends, is a high-end intermediary between large corporations with super-dirty laundry and their former employees who want some money and a guarantee of safety in return for their silence.

“John” relies on the relay service to literally speak for him, so that the clients don’t know his face or voice and cannot track his phone or IP address.

New client Sarah (Lily James) first tries a high-end law firm, but they don’t handle this type of case anymore. They do, however, provide her with information on how to contact John. If his methods of maintaining his own anonymity seem convoluted, they’re nothing compared to the paces he puts Sarah through to keep the goon squad sent by her ex-bosses off her trail.

While Sarah can’t see “John,” he takes pains to observe her – after all, one of the things she’s paying him for is to make sure she’s safe – and he is affected by her plight.

There is a gargantuan plot twist in the third act that is set up properly in the script by Justin Piasecki. There’s no pulling a fast one on the audience, we just don’t see it coming. It’s so effective that we’re inclined to overlook a couple of iffy details.

(These may include how the relay system operates. This reviewer did some fact-checking with a friend who is a sign language interpreter for a video relay service. She had questions about RELAY’s premise in terms of its presentation of a service mainly for the deaf, and said that the relay services do keep call logs, so it seems certain liberties have been taken for dramatic purposes.)

Director David Mackenzie keeps a chilly but brisk tone throughout. There is something of a ‘70s thriller vibe here, with movies like THE CONVERSATION coming to mind. The filmmakers are aware, and know that we’re aware, that there is a lot of scummy behavior propelling the action. One of the big questions is whether John will allow himself to become aware of it.

There are some great set piece scenes in locations as diverse as a concert hall and a newsstand, but there’s also some spy vs. spy repetitiveness as John and the corporate fixer team, headed up by Dawson (Sam Worthington), take turns outsmarting each other.

Ahmed manages to make his character simultaneously guarded and soulful and is compelling throughout. James excels in her role, Worthington and Willa Fitzgerald as his second in command are suitably eager and ruthless, and Matthew Maher invites our pity as another of “John’s” clients. Victor Garber makes such an impression early on that we wish he was in more of the film.

RELAY has its slow patches, but it also has strong performances and, again, a terrific climactic revelation.

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A thriller about anonymity and intermediating in the Internet age

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