The Hand-Off

The strange physics of trying not to win

The Hand-Off takes a premise that could've been a gimmick — a relay runner agrees to throw a race — and turns it into one of the tensest things we've got. The deal is made in the first five minutes. The rest is the baton refusing to cooperate.

It's billed as sports-noir, and that's exactly right: the lighting, the dread, the sense that everyone on the track knows something you don't. But it's really about momentum — how hard it is to stop a body, or a conspiracy, once it's moving.

Complicity has never looked this much like running.

Stick with the last lap. The ending is a small miracle of timing.

— Sam