David Mackenzie and Relay Still Harold Feng/Getty Images; Bleeker Street Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text In 2013, David Mackenzie reset his career. That's when the Scottish filmmaker shot the prison drama Starred Up with Ben Mendelsohn and Jack O'Connell at a real prison in Belfast, Ireland. It was a palate cleanser for his 2011 sci-fi romantic drama, Perfect Sense, in which Eva Green and Ewan McGregor's characters fall in love amid a global epidemic that causes people to lose their sensory perceptions. Mackenzie felt he may have been "bullshitting" his way through that film's heightened themes, and so the grounded nature of Starred Up provided him a welcomed change of pace, as well as an edge that's remained in his subsequent works. Related Stories Movies Riz Ahmed Explains How a Real-Life Robbery Inspired 'Relay' Role and Why He's Glad He Didn't Appear on 'Andor' Business Taylor Sheridan Partners With Paramount on New Studio in Texas "I became what I call a born-again realist, and I've taken that with me on the road ever since. [Starred Up] was a breath of fresh air, and it was the turning point in the way I work," Mackenzie tells The Hollywood Reporter. "I stopped using clapperboards. I edit what I've shot on that same day ... I've developed a faster method that's more immediate, and it allows the actors a lot more freedom to improvise." Mackenzie's newfound commitment to efficiency would be put to the ultimate test on his next film, Hell or High Water (2016). The crime thriller was written by Taylor Sheridan, and despite penning it after his first feature script, Sicario (2015), Hell or High Water was actually the first screenplay the former actor-turned-filmmaker sold after resetting his own career. The film would go on to become Mackenzie's masterwork, boasting the best performance of Chris Pine's career, one that was captured in only 17 days due to his Star Trek schedule. (Co-stars Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham all give highly memorable turns in their own right.) On Aug. 22, Mackenzie returns to cinemas with the Justin Piasecki-written Relay, and the throwback crime thriller very much feels like a companion to Hell or High Water. Instead of the New Mexico desert that doubled for Texas and Oklahoma, Relay opts for the urban environment of New York City. Instead of punishing banks for their predatory practices, Relay condemns soulless corporations for their malfeasance and corruption. Riz Ahmed plays a fixer who specializes in protecting reluctant whistleblowers from their former employers. He'll broker hush money payments for the would-be whistleblower and arrange their safe relocation, while also retaining a copy of any and all incriminating documents so that the corporation in question doesn't harm their former employee. And he negotiates all of his settlements by transmitting messages from a TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf) to a relay call service. The relay operators then read his outgoing messages to either party over the phone. Ahmed's Ash and Pine's Toby come from completely different backgrounds, but their highly methodical processes achieve successful outcomes when followed to the letter. They've thought of everything and accounted for loopholes that most people wouldn't. However, both of their endeavors suffer when their hearts get the better of their brains. "[Relay and Hell or High Water] have a yin-and-yang kind of thing: urban and rural, good guys and bad guys. They both have an us-against-the-system quality," Mackenzie says. "They're not quite sticking it to the man, but they're surviving against the man. I'm drawn to rebels and the outlaw spirit, and cinema likes rebels, so I get there's connections there." Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Mackenzie also discusses his aversion to pre-branded entertainment, as well as his upcoming TIFF premiere of Fuze, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James. *** You've been on quite a run of quality work since Starred Up in 2013. Looking back, are you able to identify a particular turning point or change in philosophy that might have led to all this? The film I did before Starred Up was Perfect Sense, which is a fable in a way. It tried to feel real, and along came a pandemic that made it feel quite a lot more real [in hindsight]. [Writer's Note: Perfect Sense is about an epidemic in which people lose their sensory perceptions.] It had a slight magical quality to it, and I struggled with the enormity of the fantastical themes that were going on in that film. I felt like I was in danger of bullshitting, and I struggled with the sense that I was bullshitting. So when we made Starred Up, the first thing I did was say that it has to be shot in a real prison. The British prison population was pretty full at the time, and while