Riz Ahmed and Lily James Star in Bleecker Street’s Sleek Psychological Thriller
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Bleecker Street unveils the taut first trailer for Relay, a sleek international thriller starring Riz Ahmed and Lily James in a game of psychological espionage and emotional duplicity.
David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) returns with Relay, a tightly wound modern thriller that blends the cold procedural style of Michael Clayton with the grit and urban paranoia of ’70s classics. The film follows Ash (Riz Ahmed), a deeply private and emotionally closed-off professional deal broker—known in intelligence and whistleblower circles as a “relay.” Hired to act as the neutral middleman in high-risk exchanges, Ash has built a career out of control and invisibility. But his next client, Sarah (Lily James), brings with her the kind of emotional turbulence—and moral weight—that threatens to upend his carefully curated detachment.
The trailer wastes no time establishing the tension that defines Ash’s world. Operating through a deaf relay call service, Ash communicates entirely via text-to-voice surrogates, never revealing his identity, location, or even his voice. It’s a digital-age cloak of invisibility that allows him to orchestrate dangerous deals between corporations and whistleblowers without ever stepping into the spotlight. His work is cold and efficient—until Sarah steps into the frame. She’s a biotech insider who’s stolen documentation revealing a cancer-causing wheat strain developed by her employer. Hunted by a kill squad, her only hope is Ash. But as emotions rise and motivations blur, the line between ally and asset begins to dissolve.
Mackenzie’s film is deeply invested in mood, pace, and psychological nuance. Cinematographer Giles Nuttgens captures a shadow-soaked New York in a muted palette—gray midtown corridors, yellow-glow hotel lobbies, and flickers of cold chrome reflected in glass and water. This is a city both alive and indifferent, where anonymity offers both protection and despair. Ahmed’s performance is pitch-perfect: haunted, restrained, alert. His every decision is weighed with surgical precision, yet he exudes the deep sadness of a man who’s spent too long speaking through other people.
James offers an emotional foil that never settles into stereotype. Her Sarah is haunted but sharp, the kind of person who’s not just running from a system but morally undone by it. Their dynamic is riddled with mistrust, unspoken longing, and mutual dependency. In one scene, Ash gazes up at her through the glass walls of her Tribeca safehouse. It’s a look that suggests years of emotional isolation rupturing in a single moment—and the trailer captures that vulnerability without saying a word.
Supporting performances hint at a broader conspiracy with real-world echoes. Sam Worthington plays the leader of the corporate cleanup crew with a gruff authority that feels less hired gun and more company man. His scenes crackle with menace, giving Relay a pressure-cooker feel even in its most silent sequences. The screenplay, written by Justin Piasecki, revels in the small moments: coded messages, shifting eye contact, the subtle recalibration of power.
What elevates Relay is its refusal to rely on spectacle. This isn’t a thriller of car chases and explosions. Instead, the stakes are cerebral and emotional—about how you keep your soul when the job requires you to erase it. Mackenzie shoots with patient confidence, letting long takes build internal pressure. Ash doesn’t just disappear into the crowd; he becomes part of it. And that anonymity—crafted so carefully—is precisely what the film sets out to unravel.
The trailer suggests that Relay is less interested in resolution than reckoning. It’s a film about moral gray zones, corporate indifference, and what it costs to be the one person trying to do the right thing when everyone else is incentivized not to. From hushed AA meetings to backchannel whistleblower transactions, the drama is stitched together from whispers rather than monologues. Like The Lives of Others or The Constant Gardener, its strength lies in what’s withheld rather than revealed.
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Premiering in select theaters September 6 via Bleecker Street, Relay looks poised to be a standout of the fall slate. For fans of smart, morally complex thrillers that trade bullets for glances and adrenaline for existential stakes, this is one to watch—and to listen to closely.
