Movie · 2025 · Action, Drama, Thriller · 1h 52m · R · English
Curator score: 4.2/10 (115.5K ratings)
No callers are identified. No conversations are recorded. No phone records are kept. Now speak clearly and when you are finished say: 'Go ahead'.
Overview
A broker of lucrative payoffs between corrupt corporations and the individuals who threaten them breaks his own rules when a new client seeks his protection to stay alive.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.2/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.34/5
Metacritic: 70
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
David Mackenzie
Production
Thunder Road, Sigma Films, Black Bear Pictures
Cast
Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington, Willa Fitzgerald, Eisa Davis, Matthew Maher, Victor Garber, Jared Abrahamson, Pun Bandhu, Seth Barrish, Jamil Haque, Jamie Ann Burke, Madison Rae Lutz, Grant Harrison, Jason Nuzzo, David Ryan Smith, Victoria Stevens, Lou Liberatore, Jessica Marza, Brian O'Neill
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A sleek, old-school paranoid thriller with strong atmosphere, a compelling lead performance, and a clever premise built around anonymity, whistleblowing, and corporate cover-ups. It sounds most rewarding when it stays focused on procedure and tension, but several viewers felt the final stretch undercuts the earlier precision.
Best for
Fans of tense, adult-oriented thrillers
Viewers who like procedural cat-and-mouse setups
People drawn to 70s-style paranoia with a modern polish
Audiences who enjoy Riz Ahmed’s restrained, internal performances
Skip if
You want a clean, airtight ending
You dislike twists that reframe the movie’s logic
You prefer action-forward thrillers over dialogue and process
You’re impatient with slower-burn suspense
Overview
Relay is at its best when it behaves like a modern paranoia thriller with old-fashioned discipline. The setup is sharp: a fixer who brokers silence between powerful people and the vulnerable individuals who can expose them, all filtered through coded communication, surveillance anxiety, and the mechanics of staying invisible in a city that never stops watching. That premise gives the film a strong pulse, and the cast helps sell the uneasy intimacy at its center.
Worth noting
The movie seems to understand the appeal of procedural tension, especially when it lingers on the details of how the system works. That specificity gives it texture and makes the first stretch especially absorbing. The mood is cool, controlled, and faintly melancholy, with a sense that everyone involved is already compromised before the plot really begins.
Bottom line
Where opinions split is in the back half, which some viewers found less satisfying than the setup. If you’re there for atmosphere, performance, and a throwback thriller rhythm, it’s an easy recommendation. If you need the ending to land with the same elegance as the premise, Relay may leave you admiring the craft more than loving the whole.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Laurence Pevsner (5★) · 1192 likes
Ending all my messages with go ahead from now on. Go ahead.
Adam Forrest (2.5★) · 988 likes
I’m struggling to think of another movie that frustrated me as much as this one did. It’s 112 minutes long, and for about 100 of those minutes, I was captivated. It was smart, tense, complex, and occasionally touching, with cool New York locations and interesting music. I was genuinely shocked by how great this I-never-heard-of-it thriller was.
And then there’s a twist, and pretty much everything that was working about the movie before gets flushed down the toilet. You thought… more
Kit Lazer (3.5★) · 949 likes
This falls just short of sheer brilliance and, to be honest, I haven’t even figured out why yet. I loved the first two thirds. This is an old school thriller, like The Conversation, that puts its hooks into you at Fade In and Riz Ahmed never lets you go, though he barely says a word.
B E R T (4★) · 904 likes
Retro ’70s tech thriller vibes? Fantastic. But Lily James worrying about being watched while leaving her blinds wide open?
Girl, please. Close the damn blinds.
Kylo (3★) · 807 likes
I definitely lack the typing speed required for a job at Relay.
1998 · Action, Drama, Thriller · 2h 12m · R · Curator 4.8/10 (392.3K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
If you want the surveillance angle pushed into a more propulsive, high-anxiety mode.
1993 · Drama, Mystery, Thriller · 2h 34m · R · Curator 4.3/10 (284.1K ratings) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, MGM Plus
A corporate thriller where a smart protagonist discovers the institution around him is far more dangerous than it first appears.