Tuner, 2025.
Directed by Daniel Roher.
Starring Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, Havana Rose Liu, Tovah Feldshuh, Jean Reno, Lior Raz, Nissan Sakira, C.S. Lee, Gil Cohen, and Rek Lee.
SYNOPSIS:
A talented piano tuner’s meticulous skills for tuning pianos lead him to discover an unexpected aptitude for cracking safes, turning his life upside down.
Simultaneously set in the world of piano tuning and small-time safecracking, director Daniel Roher’s Tuner (collaborating on the screenplay with Robert Ramsey) elevates its familiar structure and storytelling with this original frequency.
With rapid-cut editing lending flash and style to Niki (Leo Woodall) in his element, whether fixing up a piano, typically alongside his amusingly contagious mentor Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), or applying the starting similarities to the hidden talent of listening for the faint sonic signifiers of a correct number in the combination, there is imagery from within piano and safes, showing the mechanics and gears at work for both. Its visual flair suggests Daniel Roher (best known for acclaimed documentaries) understands the inner workings of this technique as well as his proficient central character, all while lending those sequences some speed, ensuring they never come across as boring or dry. Technically, one of them is a heist, but capturing each act similarly shows that, while Niki is utilizing the same skill set, he is moving away from an honest living and perhaps misusing it.
Once a gifted piano-playing prodigy himself, Niki now lives with a hearing condition that has him almost permanently wearing earplugs or headphones to drown out noise that inflicts piercing pain. In keeping with the style of the piano tuning and the safecracking, there is also immersive sound design that either drops the audio levels significantly or conveys the swirling sonic Suffering he experiences without anything plugging his ears. After developing this condition, he gave up his dreams in the industry, and now he is perhaps letting his talent go to waste by merely tuning other pianos.
Nevertheless, the playful and funny banter between him and Harry sets up a believable friendship immediately worth investing in, even before any conflict is introduced. That comes when Harry, who is already in the early onset stages of dementia, falls ill, and it is also revealed that he owes a sizable amount of money in ignored medical payments. Devastated and desperate to resolve the situation, Niki calls back a Robin Hood-like band of thieves led by Uri (Lior Raz), who explains that the rich are so preoccupied with everything else in their lives that they don’t realize that such people pocket the occasional object. Uri also justifies this by mentioning that most of these elites are generally heartless and cruel toward immigrants, backing up his claims with evidence.
Meanwhile, Niki is also regularly getting closer to a piano prodigy client, aspiring to the life he wanted in Havana Rose Liu’s Ruthie. She also becomes the recipient of expensive gifts once the money starts flowing in from job after job, paying off Harry’s medical bills and having more leftover than he knows what to do with. initially, this romantic subplot feels shoehorned in, especially since the entire reason they are seeing one another in the first place is due to putting some pressure on Niki to take a shot and walk her to class and strike up some conversation, nut it does unexpectedly morph into a compelling element boasting some eventual friction between them regarding her ambition and his lost drive to make something of himself, a terrific twist, and a hell of a rousing, moving ending.
It must also be said that Leo Woodall is outstanding in the role of Niki, selling this hearing condition while also expressing internal conflict about his choices, past and present. Again, there are no surprises in the structure here, but that is offset by a filmmaker who throws us into two polar-opposite fields alongside a condition that allows for a stylish sensory experience. Tuner isn’t reinventing the crime thriller genre, but it is perfectly fine-tuned, approaching it from a new angle. As for Daniel Roher, it’s common knowledge that he can make an absorbing documentary; now it turns out that narrative features are perhaps one of his hidden talents.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
