WWTBAM Bored

This movie is playing in a handful of theaters, but it's also available on the Roku Channel for free (with ads). I saw it today in the theater (thanks to my pass, I didn't pay for it), and it's one of the better recent thrillers with an original premise.

The protagonist (Riz Ahmed) is a professional go-between who acts as a middleman between companies and potential whistleblowers who get the goods on their nefarious practices. Lily James is a scientist at one such company who discovers that their "miracle" agricultural supplement has toxic side effects. She steals the report, but when the company sends goons to threaten her, she gets scared and decides to return it. Ahmed has to make sure everything goes smoothly.

The film relies on an unusual gimmick. Ahmed uses a relay service for those who are hard of hearing to communicate with James and the bad guys. He types his message in, the relay service calls the recipient and dictates the message, then gets the response and types it back to Ahmed. Under federal law, the communication is secure, so the bad guys can't trace him, even if they bug James's phone.

A lot of action in the second half, but it's quite fast paced.

It turns out that the movie that's supposedly available on the Roku Channel is not Relay, despite what IMDB and Reelgood say. My bad. It's still a good movie whenever it gets to streaming.