Relay: A suspenseful race

Relay (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.24.25

This is a slick little burst of adrenaline.

 

Director David Mackenzie’s sharp handling of Justin Piasecki’s original script evokes fond memories of 1970s “paranoia thrillers” such as The Parallax View, The Conversation and Executive Action.

 

Ash (Riz Ahmed), well aware that his client's movements are being monitored at all
times, finds it increasingly difficult to help her evade this surveillance.

In terms of pacing and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens’ numerous long takes, Mackenzie’s approach also is old-school, despite the action taking place very strongly in present-day Manhattan. At a tense and suspenseful 112 minutes, this film deserves to be viewed uninterrupted, so plan accordingly.

Ash (Riz Ahmed), a former failed corporate whistleblower, nearly killed himself via guilt-induced alcoholism. Now several years sober and faithfully attending AA meetings, he has re-invented himself as a solitary “fixer” who helps others in similar dire straits: people who attempt to be a whistleblower, but then fearfully panic and wish solely to return the stolen data, in the hopes of being left alone.

 

Ash acts as a go-between, brokering lucrative payoffs between corrupt corporations and the individuals who threaten their ruin. He arranges for the data to be returned, while retaining a carefully protected copy himself, as a means of ensuring his client’s ongoing safety. 

 

Ash remains a unseen figure in the shadows, keeping his identity secret via meticulous planning and an exacting set of rules. He operates via disguises, discarded phone SIM cards, U.S. Post Office drops under multiple fictitious names — often in other cities and states — while living in a high-security building and masterminding each operation from an equally fortified “war room.”

 

He never speaks to a client, instead maintaining anonymity via the “Tri-State Relay Service,” which provides specially trained operators to relay telephone conversations between people who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech-disabled. He types his messages; they’re communicated verbally to the client by a relay operator; the client responds verbally, which in turn is relayed back to Ash’s laptop.

 

It’s fascinating: slow, but quite effective.

American Animals: Savvy indictment of youthful privilege

American Animals (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use and brief crude content
By Derrick Bang

Real life isn’t merely stranger than fiction; sometimes it’s a lot dumber.

In 2004, a quartet of bored Kentucky college students, seeking a way to inject some spice into their plain-vanilla lives, concocted a preposterous scheme to “make millions” by stealing rare books from the Transylvania University library’s essentially unguarded special collections section.

Surrounded by the fluorescent blandness of a supermarket, Spencer (Barry Keoghan, left)
and Warren (Evan Peters) spin a series of what-ifs into an actual criminal plot.

Yes, books. Bulky, heavy books.

Which the lads expected to transform into cash by passing them along to a fence. In Amsterdam.

The mind doth boggle.

The actual events are jaw-dropping enough, but indie writer/director Bart Layton has enhanced the narrative even further: He blends his film’s dramatic depiction of what actually went down, with on-camera commentary and recollections by the now-adult thieves. It’s a cheeky maneuver strongly reminiscent of director Craig Gillespie’s handling of last year’s I, Tonya, with a similar result: We’re fascinated by the saga, yet left to wonder to what degree these narrators are reliable.

Layton audaciously signals his intentions right from the top, with a variation on what has become the usual introductory disclosure statement, when dealing with fact-based events:

This is not based on a true story

And while we mull that over, an off-camera exhalation — the sound of blowing out the candles on a birthday cake — chases away a few words, so the statement becomes:

This is a true story

Don’t know about the rest of you, but I couldn’t help italicizing the second word, as I scanned that line again.

After a brief flash-forward designed to pique our curiosity, we bounce back several months and meet chums Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) and Warren Lipka (Evan Peters). The former is a freshman art major at Transylvania University, the latter blowing off a soccer scholarship at nearby University of Kentucky. When Spencer gets an orientation tour of his library’s $20 million collection of rare books — a glassed-off room supervised solely by librarian Betty Jean Gooch (Ann Dowd) — he’s transfixed by an open copy of John James Audubon’s massive Birds of America, residing in its own display case.

Spencer later describes the book — and its “priceless” value — to Warren. One or both of them imagines taking it, selling it, enjoying their subsequent ill-gotten gains.

Layton intercuts between the actual Spencer and Warren, each remembering their plot’s genesis slightly differently, neither quite willing to admit being the one who actually proposed the theft.