David Mackenzie's latest film might be set in contemporary New York City, but "Relay" feels borne from a different (and not necessarily simpler) time: The '70s, when paranoia thrillers ruled at the box office. The set-up of the film, starring Riz Ahmed and Lily James, is wonderfully inventive: James plays a would-be whistleblower hoping to take down her former biotech bosses, and Ahmed is a lone wolf fixer working to broker a deal and keep his new client safe.
The twist? Ahmed's character -- who goes by many different names and doesn't even speak until a solid 30 minutes into the film -- favors old school technology for most of his communications. They mostly hinge on a relay system, a decidedly lo-fi electronic way of messaging that helps people with a hearing or speech disability make and receive telephone calls via text (with a human relay operator as ironclad intermediary). It's a smart way to avoid detection, and a hell of a way to build tension in the film itself.
As Mackenzie told me last year, he was attracted to the film because of the way it echoed the paranoid thrillers of the '60s and '70s he loved -- stuff like "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Parallax View" and "Point Blank" and even something more recent like "Michael Clayton" -- the kind of films where, as he said, "You're sort of feeling like the strange corporate forces are all around you and are kind of at work against you. ... The old technology also sort of harks back to those cool '70s thrillers that kind of feel in the DNA of this project and hopefully echoes in it a little bit."
And James added that she studied up on those same films for her work in "Relay."
"David gave me a ton of those classic thrillers watch to get into the right vibe and tone, and it felt really authentic," James told IndieWire before last year's TIFF. "Just by the nature of the way that they need to communicate, being this old relay system and using the post office, it was such a brilliant throwback. Once you take away a mobile phone, there's automatically this greater need for connection and greater kind of drama."
With that all in mind, Bleecker Street has now released a brand-new trailer for "Relay" that leans way into those '70s paranoia thrillers, making connections between Mackenzie's new film and the look and feel of the features that helped inspire him. In November of last year, Bleecker Street picked up the film after its well-received world premiere at TIFF, and the indie imprint seems to be going all-in on this very smart buy.
Bleecker Street will premiere "Relay" in theaters on Friday, August 22. Check out the film's new, retro-styled trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.