Riz Ahmed in David Mackenzie's Whistleblower Thriller

A surprising legacy of 9/11 is how the U.S. government exploited the national grief and panic to pass aggressive legislation that stripped Americans of their privacy rights. The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, also known as the Patriot Act, was passed in October 2001, 45 days after the World Trade Center collapsed, and gave the government “roving surveillance authority.” Agents would not need a warrant to intercept email communications or phone calls, or monitor credit reports and banking history. Masked in the language of security, the Patriot Act turned every person into a suspect. In the decades since, Americans have become so accustomed to giving up privacy that we have willingly accepted technologies and resources that require data.

The overwhelming power of the surveillance state looms large in David Mackenzie's gritty thriller Relaypremiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars Riz Ahmed as Ash, an off-grid technologist who brokers deals between whistleblowers and companies in distress. He helps people who are unsure whether they want to report their employers, facilitating the return of stolen documents and other evidence of corporate wrongdoing. Ash does all this using methods that maintain his anonymity: a message-forwarding service that helps people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech-impaired communicate; the U.S. Post Office, which despite its frustrated bureaucracy stores user data; and by using only cash and disposable phones.

Relay pays homage to a once ubiquitous action thriller genre, characterized by its fast pace and satisfying mystery. It's also a thrilling New York film. Mackenzie (Hell or high water, Outlaw King) replaces overused cityscape shots or a bustling Grand Central with relatively unfamiliar glimpses of a gentrified Lower East Side and the still-steeple corners of Myrtle-Broadway in Brooklyn. The director also pays close attention to how Ash remains anonymous in our age of privacy as a luxury good, filming his protagonist’s trial with the same nail-biting intensity as more conventional, high-octane action sequences.

The film opens with Ash brokering another whistleblower deal with Hoffman (Matthew Maher), a former employee of Optimal Pharmaceuticals, a company whose reputation closely resembles that of Purdue Pharma. Continuous footage of a meeting between the nervous middle manager and his CEO (Victor Garber) establishes the paranoid atmosphere of Relay. The exchange goes smoothly, freeing Hoffman, who flees to a safe house in Poughkeepsie, from a pair of hired goons to follow and intimidate him. We see Ash, a distant, methodical figure, return to his workspace where he locks the file in a safe.

As soon as one case closes, another opens. At the center of Relay It's an increasingly dangerous chase between Ash and the farm that threatens his latest client, Sarah (Lily James). She's a senior researcher in a constant state of turmoil after stealing a hundreds-page report that reveals her former employers knowingly sold a toxic chemical fertilizer. Sarah, like Hoffman, has considered going to the police or leaking the information to the newspapers, but the company's escalating intimidation tactics have made her change her mind. After trying unsuccessfully to find a lawyer, she is referred by a lawyer to Ash's unusual service.

The best parts of Relay exploit the details of Ash’s brokerage. Mackenzie’s direction is never more precise than when it focuses on message relays, burner phones, and post office bureaucracy. Ash’s sly costume changes, as he guides Sarah through the process of paying the $50,000 fee and sending the master copies of the report, underscore the racism of the surveillance state and corporations. Ash, a black man in a post-9/11 New York, is often hiding in plain sight, dressed casually like a delivery driver or a jogger running through the city. He rarely interacts with people, except to attend AA meetings or visit his guy with the fake ID.

Ahmed excels in this role which requires his character to communicate a range of emotions, from a confident gait to anxious concentration, with few words. By nature, Relaywhich focuses on how one man goes unnoticed, Ash can be a distant character. But Ahmed’s performance has flashes of intimacy that become more common as the fixer gets closer to his client.

While it's nice to see Ash's more vulnerable sides, they also reveal his weaknesses. Relay. As Ash grows closer to Sarah, Justin Piasecki’s screenplay delves into a kind of far-fetched, overly sentimental arena. Part of the problem comes from the pacing: His relationship with Sarah isn’t given much time to develop. The clip of their budding friendship not only previews some of the film’s twists and turns but also disappointingly forecloses on more interesting narrative directions, especially when it comes to observing the film’s ever-present surveillance culture. Ash also makes decisions that feel antithetical to his character, becoming trusting in a way that feels remarkably naive for someone so admirably scrupulous. That kind of shift, however well-intentioned, blunts the edge of an otherwise compelling thriller and ultimately results in a disappointing conclusion that doesn’t align with our paranoia.