Likely because of its obvious similarities to The Conversation, David Mackenzie’s first proper release in nearly a decade is being touted as some kind of heroic callback to the adult thrillers of the 1970s. As marketing campaigns go, it’s a bold gambit, since anyone old enough to remember those kinds of films the first time round will well into their 60s now. It would be more honest to say that Relay honors the concept of 1970s filmmaking, and in that respect skews closer to the clever low-budget neo-noirs of the 1990s, which used to be (rather lazily) labelled Tarantino-esque, even though they more closely resembled — like Mackenzie’s terrific 2016 neo-Western Hell or High Water — the earlier films of John Dahl (notably The Last Seduction and Red Rock West).
A vehicle for versatile British actor Riz Ahmed, Relay offers a new spin on the whistleblower drama, a subgenre that, at the turn of the millennium, attracted A-list stars in the likes of The Insider, Erin Brockovich and Michael Clayton. Relay offers a refreshing new take, as is laid out in an opening sequence that appears to be standalone but will be referenced throughout. A man named Hoffman is meeting, one on one, with the big boss at the big pharma company he used to work for, in a brightly lit diner. Hoffman looks pretty beaten up and greets the smartly dressed older man with contempt. “I thought I’d get to see what evil looks like, but you just look like everyone else,” he says. Handing over a file, he explains...
New York-based partner Frank A. Mazzagatti is scheduled to present at the 2025 Illinois Association of Healthcare Attorneys (IAHA) 43rd Annual Health Law Symposium on November 6, 2025, in Chicago, ...