A terrifically smart script from up-and-comer Justin Piasecki is the basis for this twisty cat-and-mouse surveillance thriller directed by David Mackenzie, which has an old-fashioned interest in analogue things like trains and the US postal service – and it comes complete with a pleasingly Hitchcockian set piece at a classical music concert. For those who remember Riz Ahmed’s turn in the award-winning 2019 movie Sound of Metal, about a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing, there is moreover an extra frisson.
Here Ahmed plays a lonely Muslim guy who grew up in the post-9/11 US; a lifetime of suspicion drove him to drink and now he’s in recovery. He runs an illegal and very lucrative specialist service for corporate employees in crooked organisations who wanted to be whistleblowers but lost their nerve and now just want to hand back the evidence without getting into further trouble. For a big fee, he will broker the return of the incriminating material while keeping back a copy for insurance purposes. To make contact with everyone, he uses a “relay” telephone service which connects deaf and speech-impaired people using telephone operators who read aloud typewritten prompts and keep no records of what is said: an ideally secure message-drop system.
Lily James plays Sarah, a woman who gets in touch with him saying she once wanted to expose her employer with a document she’s stolen; now she’s scared and just wants out. The fixer agrees to help, but breaks his own rules by getting emotionally close to her. Sam Worthington plays the sinister surveillance operative who wants to neutralise Sarah; it is nice to see Worthington get a break from boring Avatar duty. There are some very coolly orchestrated scenes in the big city and Mackenzie ratchets up the tension in style.
