Review: Relay

3 November, 2025 William Eguizabal 0 Comments 2 categories

Title: Relay
MPA Rating: R
Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins

What It Is: Ash (Ahmed) is a mysterious man — a courier who uses a relay system designed for the hard of hearing to conduct his business. This system offers him anonymity, and it’s that very anonymity Ash uses to help those who need something done but have no other way of getting it done. When he receives a call from Sarah (James), he agrees to take her case and help return a set of highly sensitive and private documents — documents that reveal high-level corruption.

What We Think: I think David Mackenzie very much makes movies for me. I liked Outlaw King, Hell or High Water was one of my favorite films the year it came out, Starred Up is incredible, and I LOVE Tonight You’re Mine. That’s about 15 years of his work — all of which is high-level excellence.

What makes this film so good is the tension. Everything builds and builds until an inevitable endpoint — and where that point lands is fantastic. Riz Ahmed is, once again, absolutely excellent. I NEED and WANT more Riz Ahmed in movies. Dude is, simply put, a leading man.

Lily James, for her part, is great as well. She’s slowly but surely putting together an impressive résumé. Sam Worthington — a man I’ve routinely called “Sam Worthless” — is mostly okay here. He still isn’t believable delivering dialogue, and that’s a problem. Even with the giant weight of him dragging the film down, there’s so much good stuff here.

Our Grade: A-, Dude. Full stop. This movie is so good. I was at the edge of my seat the entire time. There’s a manic energy reminiscent of a Safdie Brothers film. I’ve never seen Mackenzie make a movie quite like this before, and I think that’s one of the things I love about him — he makes so many different types of films that you can never really pin down what exactly a David Mackenzie film is. See this immediately. It’s a phenomenal watch. You won’t be sorry.