RELAY. A hundred years ago, in 2016, David Mackenzie directed Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay Hell or High Water. That story, set against and amongst the devastation wrought by the 2008 collapse of the criminally exploitative American mortgage securities racket, is about individual desperation in the face of remorseless corporate greed. It is also a thrilling heist/pursuit movie, propulsively photographed by Mackenzie’s frequent collaborator Giles Nuttgens, one that successfully embedded its topical, timely thematic material in a souped-up, old-school Western action picture. The deluge of media and the splintering of American cinema culture that have followed have perhaps dimmed its memory for some of the audience, but to me it stands up with the best, most incisive work on the subject.
Flashing forward to the present day, I had not, to my shame, thought all that much about Mackenzie, who has since directed episodes of television series I haven’t watched and a Netflix feature (The Outlaw King, 2018) that was, at the time, mostly talked about for its full-frontal nudity. In my defense, I spent much of the period ruminating on the end of the world.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see the director’s name attached to Relay, a modest thriller that, for Hollywood’s inability to learn how to communicate, may well remain below most people’s radar. One of those relics of bygone eras, the loss of which I lament every time I review them, Relay channels the rare, inspired contrarianism of a writer (Justin Piasecki) who refuses to let the advent of surveillance culture and the proliferation of technology stymie the impulse to make a truly modern espionage thriller.
Riz Ahmed, whose character name we may not ever actually learn, plays an intermediary with a very specific mission statement and methodology: acting as liaison between whistleblowers whose fear for their own safety has led them to reconsider their white-hat instincts and the corporate monoliths threatening to crush them. Using telephone relay services (implemented to assist the deaf), cash transactions and the U.S. Postal Service, our nameless protagonist facilitates the return of sensitive documents in return for the assured safety and financial compensation of his clients. It’s a line of work motivated by the desire to do the right thing, to empower the disempowered, but it is also couched in the remorseful truth that doing the right thing, in this context, ultimately means the bad guys get away with it. Things are further complicated when our guy’s newest client, a bioengineer named Sarah (Lily James), starts to speak to his own sense of loneliness and isolation.
A compact, clever and artfully put together New York story that, like Hell or High Water did for its place and time, combines genre with of-the-moment commentary on avarice, personal ethics and systems of power. R. 112M. ROKU.
HIGHEST 2 LOWEST. As ever, I’ll begin with a disclaimer: Akira Kurosawa’s work is a bit of blind spot, meaning I know more about it than I’ve actually experienced. I felt a compulsion to watch the master’s High and Low (1963) when I learned Spike Lee was adapting it, but I probably watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or something.
Disrespectful as I have been to the work of director Kurosawa, I strive to express appropriate piety for that of director Lee; even in that, I have been remiss and remain penitent. I didn’t watch the David Byrne thing (I hear it’s great), but the fact that Lee’s first scripted feature since Da 5 Bloods (2020) is an A24 and Apple co-production — meaning, ostensibly, he got some money to spend — starring Denzel Washington, about kidnapping and the music industry, all set in the penthouses and basements of NYC? I can’t not go.
And, as ever, one of the great lights of American cinema does not disappoint.
David King (Washington), founder of a once unstoppable hit factory, is at a crossroads. Having years before agreed to sell much of his interest in his own record label, he faces a buyout offer from a bigger, more modern concern. Still hungry though, King has a plan to replant his flag and charge back into the fray. On the afternoon of his would-be coup, though, a botched kidnapping forces him to reconsider his loyalties and ambitions.
Even as I neglect some of the forefathers, I can take some solace in the fact that Spike Lee, ever-evolving but ever-reverential of his influences, can still put together a vivid, personal, over-the-top, grand-scale movie awash in its score and punctuated by Matthew Libatique’s vibrant, visceral cinematography that can, in only one of its dazzling sequences, set a ransom money drop against the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade and make it look easy.
It’s a caper movie, but it’s about Black excellence, greed, remorse, second chances and the cultural fabric of New York, and it is as vital, inventive and exciting as anything Spike and Washington have ever done. R. 133M. MINOR.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
NOW PLAYING
THE BAD GUYS 2. A team of Bad Girls enters the fray in this animated heist adventure. PG. 104M. BROADWAY.
CAUGHT STEALING. Comedy-thriller about a down-on-his-luck himbo and his girl (Austin Butler, Zöe Kravitz) who get tangled in a multi-mob cash-grab in 1990s New York City. R. 107M. BROADWAY.
THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Not sure how many reboots this makes, but if elastic Pedro Pascal can›t save the Marvel comic actioner, nothing can. PG13. 115M. BROADWAY.
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HONEY DON’T. Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans in a darkly comic mystery about a private investigator directed by Ethan Coen. R. 88M. BROADWAY.
JAWS 50TH ANNIVERSARY. Nostalgia for when feckless leadership in the face of disaster was summer movie fun. PG. 124M. BROADWAY (3D).
LILO AND STITCH. Live-action remake of the space alien adventure in Hawaii. PG. 108M. BROADWAY.
THE NAKED GUN. Liam Neeson goes full goofball as the heir to Leslie Nielsen›s police parody dynasty. PG13. 85M. BROADWAY.
NE ZHA II. Animated adventure about a flaming fighter on a quest for a magical lotus. NR. 143M. MINOR.
NOBODY 2. Sequel starring Bob Odenkirk as a subdued former killer beset by bad guys amid his retirement. R. 89M. BROADWAY.
THE ROSES. A high-powered couple (Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman) break up and break things in this dark comedy remake. R. 105M. BROADWAY.
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WEAPONS. Horror-mystery set in a small town in the wake of 17 children disappearing simultaneously in the night. R. 128M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.
This article appears in ‘Come Back Young Again’.