No, Riz Ahmed is not playing deaf again, although the Sound of Metal star doesn’t speak for the first half of Relay. The title even refers to the phone service that facilitates conversations for the hearing-impaired, which Ahmed’s Ash uses to keep his identity secret, being a fixer in the world of corporate espionage and all.

His newest client is Sarah (Lily James, Baby Driver), a genetic scientist in possession of an incriminating document from her former employer. A week before that company goes publicly traded, she wants to broker a deal to give the study back in exchange for the escalating harassment by corporate goons (led by Avatar’s Sam Worthington) to cease.

Attribute Ash’s success in this dangerous business to his adherence to rules regarding his clients — namely, communicating only via relay and never meeting them. But with Sarah looking like Lily James … oops!

Relay starts like crime-pic catnip: at night in New York City, complete with ambient traffic noise, a color palette that pops in gunmetal blue and chewable-children’s-aspirin orange, and the words “directed by David Mackenzie.” He made Hell or High Water, my favorite film of 2016. That pic was bottled lightning, so I wasn’t expecting Relay to reach its level. And it doesn’t.

Yet it’s a solid B. That witnessing multiple instances of Ash’s lightspeed keystrokes — and various relay operators reading to Sarah what he types — isn’t monotonous speaks to the strength of Mackenzie’s direction and Justin Piasecki’s screenplay. Their collaboration operates neatly and quietly in the shadows of 1970s conspiracy-driven thrillers. Even the relay machine Ash lugs around looks appropriately analogue.

Immensely talented, Ahmed seems to enjoy digging into what is essentially a spy film, including the opportunity to be a master of disguise. Relay marks as close as he’s come to leading an action vehicle, because in massive movies like Venom and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, he’s either the villain or the sidekick. Enjoy this while it lasts. —Rod Lott

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Because career criminal Nate doesn’t pledge allegiance to skinheads when he’s released from prison, the gang puts a hit on his family members’ heads. As She Rides Shotgun opens, Nate’s ex-wife already has been snuffed out, leaving his 11-year-old daughter next in line.

So when Nate (Taron Egerton) zooms up in a stolen car, Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) reluctantly joins her father because she barely knows him. It’s not like she has a choice, but it beats certain death. Suddenly, it’s a hard-knock life for her — on the run, on the lam and getting a crash course in cracking skulls.

A sympathetic police detective (Rob Yang, The Menu) gives Nate a shot at redemption: taking down “the meth house to end all meth houses.” It’s more a village of RVs lorded over by a corrupt town sheriff with a god complex (John Carroll Lynch, Zodiac).

Adapted from Jordan Harper’s Edgar Award-winning 2017 crime novel by Super Dark Times screenwriters Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins, She Rides Shotgun arrives on screens softly, but carries a big stick — a metal baseball bat, to be precise. You might not believe me given the movie’s unfortunate tagline of “All a father needs is a fighting chance.” Pay no attention to that, as on-the-rise director Nick Rowland (The Shadow of Violence) is able — nine times out of 10 — to avoid the cloying sentimentality that clouds kindred efforts.

Rowland won me over with nail-biting tension in the first scene. A midpoint car chase following a botched convenience store robbery crackles with intensity, too, as Underworld’s “Denver Luna” sets pace. In those instances and more, the movie feels like Luc Besson’s The Professional if Léon and Mathilda shared common DNA.

Onboard as a producer, Egerton has shown real growth as an actor post-Kingsman, most notably on Apple’s Emmy-winning Black Bird limited series. His excellent work there was overshadowed by Paul Walter Hauser, also excellent, in the meatier supporting role. A similar upstaging occurs here by Ana Sophia Heger (Things Heard & Seen) in her theatrical debut. As Polly, she possesses what precious few child actors exhibit: a lived-in authenticity. Without spoiling anything, what she does in the heart-crushing extended final shot — reminiscent of the one closing the Safdie brothers’ Good Time — is nothing short of amazing. —Rod Lott

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As teased on these pages, I had a first date in 2017 that proved highly memorable for all the wrong reasons. Professing a love for movies, she asked the last thing I’d liked. My answer was that afternoon’s viewing: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s mystery-thriller Creepy.

“Wait, a movie from another country? Why would you want to watch that?” asked the shrew.

“Because it’s interesting,” I said.

Unconvinced, she continued to deride my viewing choices — plus my car, clothes, hair and more — as a second daiquiri fully revealed her charcoal briquette of a heart.

Watching Cloud, Kurosawa’s newest, I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d say about it. If I knew which bridge she taunts passing goats from, I might venture to ask. I assume her ever-emboldened response would be even more transparently racist and ignorant.

But enough about that hate-filled person. Cloud is full of people just like her: out only for themselves, consequences to others be damned. The protagonist, if by default, is Ryôsuke (Masaki Suda, 2021’s Cube remake) a low-level factory cog. He and his girlfriend (Kotone Furukawa, 12 Suicidal Teens) long for a new life outside Tokyo, but they want it like they want everything else: the easy way.

His side hustle — and it indeed is a hustle — holds the potential to realize their dream: reselling tech devices, bulk collectibles and designer knock-offs at inflated prices online. After chasing profit by any means necessary, Ryôsuke’s misdeeds catch up to him and negative feedback becomes the least of his worries. As his former mentor (Masataka Kubota, 2010’s 13 Assassins) puts it, “Winning streaks don’t last forever.”

The gifted Kurosawa shows instead of tells. He excels at luring us into a scenario with the barest of details. You may not fully gain your bearings before you’re spellbound in its darkness. Cloud is about how the concept of internet anonymity is just that: a concept, a mirage subject to evaporate in a keystroke. Across a too-protracted third act, it depicts an epic battle without honor or humanity, in which every participant lacks redeeming qualities.

Don’t let metaphors put you off Cloud, as Kurosawa still works under the traditional thriller model. That includes chases, traps and brutal acts of revenge best served cold and set to livestream.

Why would I want to watch that? Because it’s riveting cinema with much on its mind and even more blood on its shirt. —Rod Lott

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Surrounded by the detritus of ever-accumulating fast-food wrappers, rideshare driver D — just D, thanks — might be the saddest bastard of all the freelance motorists on the Vrmr app. He’s behind on rent and utilities, and has a new mouth to feed at home. With each trip to the tank running him $90, he can’t get ahead, no matter how many hours he puts in on the road.

Enter a passenger (scene-stealing Adam Goldhammer) who reps a competing startup app, promising D (Nathanael Chadwick, The Last Porno Show) earnings of thousands a night driving for them. It doesn’t require a fancy car — just utmost discretion and following orders to a T, lest D lose $50 per missed command.

If you assume taking the job makes D complicit in criminal activity and abhorrent behavior, well, duh! And therein lies Self Driver’s fun, as D tools around town, running dubious errands and picking up questionable fares, all while Antonio Naranjo’s score nearly wraps tension into White Lotus-tight knots. With the script’s one-crazy-night setup, writer/director (and editor) Michael Pierro grants his first feature a significant After Hours vibe, right down to its Möbius-strip end, although leaning more into the lane of danger.

If only D were a quarter as likable as Paul Hackett. Sure, Griffin Dunne’s character in that Martin Scorsese black comedy lived in a buffer bubble of yuppiedom, but he wasn’t an asshole by trade. That’s my one nagging issue with the otherwise impressive Self Driver: Its protagonist is a full-time asshole. D’s rude to customers; his car is a pig sty; he urinates in public — none of which endear us to him the way abject poverty alone would.

Still, as D, Chadwick is well-cast. So are all the actors portraying riders of varying sanity and sobriety who flit in and out of his backseat until day finally breaks. Among them, Christian Aldo and Catt Filippov (both Last Porno vets) stand out as, respectively, a high-strung drug dealer and an enigmatic young woman bearing angel wings. I know, I know: That last one seems like a metaphor so on-the-nose, you can taste the Afrin drip. But before that can happen, Pierro’s indie takes a major turn you won’t anticipate. —Rod Lott

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As The Beach Boys once sang, catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of the world. But what happens when you’re prevented from catching a wave, much less a break? That’s the dilemma facing Nicolas Cage’s title character in The Surfer, a single-location thriller shot on the Australian oceanside.

Playing a successful businessman in the throes of a divorce, he’s taken a mental health day to surf with his teen son (Finn Little, Those Who Wish Me Dead) at a special place: by the house he’s purchasing. It’s where the surfer grew up, mere steps from the sacred sand. Trouble is, the beach is overrun by a gang of bullies who operate by a simple code: “Don’t live ’ere, don’t surf ’ere!”

Led by a red-robed and crispy-tanned Julian McMahon (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer), the hooligans deny the surfer entry and steal his board. Running recon from the parking lot atop the hill, the surfer attempts to reclaim what’s his, physically and spiritually, only to be outsmarted at every turn. Just when you think the surfer can’t sink any lower in his attempt to answer the mythic call of the waves, glug glug glug.

With shades of Frank Perry’s The Swimmer, but more akin to Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs at high tide, The Surfer finds Irish director Lorcan Finnegan paying off the visual promise he displayed in Vivarium, a great concept rendered too obtuse — and boring — for its own good. Getting out of that 2019 film’s house and into nature does wonders for him, as well as working with someone else’s script, here by TV writer Thomas Martin, who finds the comedic in the tragic. Vibrant photography from The Babadook cinematographer Radek Ladczuk helps immerse us within Cage’s sun-soaked delirium, prompting questions of how much of what we’re seeing may just be imagined.

One hopes Cage’s much-publicized tax troubles are nearing rearview-mirror status so the supremely gifted actor can continue his comeback tour toward relevance with projects like this and other recents (e.g., Longlegs, Dream Scenario, Color Out of Space) and far, far away from every straight-to-VOD actioner shot in New Orleans. Ever since the 2018 phantasmagoria known as Mandy, I’ve noticed members of the younger generation clamoring for a Cage Freak-Out™ in each picture — and then losing their shit when it arrives. They’ll be pleased to know Finnegan sates their appetite with our hero’s shouted demand of one oppressor, “Eat the rat! Eat it!” 

Hey, whatever gets their butts into seats. Especially for this winner with an ethereal final shot that hits like a missile of emotion. Hang 10. —Rod Lott

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