Dustin Hoffman has lost his hearing aids.
Okay, he didn’t so much as lose them as he did mistakenly place them in a safe, which he recently changed the combination to. Just what he changed the combination to is anyone’s guess—his included. He’s tried everything—birthdays… okay, really just birthdays—but that safe perched on the top shelf of his closet isn’t budging. He can’t break it open, either, as the door isn’t thick enough. Sucks, right? This whole exercise quickly proves tiresome, so he falls asleep on his living room chair; it’s now up to Leo Woodall to extract these hearing aids and save the proverbial day.
And thus commences a snowballing series of increasingly poor decisions that populate Tuner with genuine laughs, well-crafted tension, and effectively conceived drama, resulting in a tonal tapestry of a movie that, somehow, materializes into a cohesive and satisfying whole. The narrative feature debut of Academy Award-winning documentarian Daniel Roher (Navalny), Tuner breaks no molds with its narrative or form, but it maximizes its, on paper, seemingly disparate parts and weaves them together to create a film that’s generally successful in what it’s trying to achieve. One part affable buddy comedy, one part romantic drama, and one part sordid crime thriller, Roher and Robert Ramsey‘s strong writing coalesces with the stellar performances across the board to elevate what reads as a somewhat derivative pitch into an effective, tension-imbued thriller that feels simultaneously like an ode to past films of its ilk and the formal arrival of two burgeoning performers whose stardom feels inevitable.
Niki White (Woodall) is a piano prodigy turned piano tuner, a childhood diagnosis of hyperacusis—a rare hearing disorder the film describes as ‘an allergy to loud noises’—necessitating that he leave playing the piano, and, by extension, an integral piece of himself, behind. Now in his late 20s, Niki works as the protégé of longtime family friend Harry Horowitz (Hoffman), the two spending their days trekking around New York in a rundown van as they commute from luxury home to luxury home to tune pianos they know won’t be played. There’s an almost familial kinship between the two, an endlessly charming rapport established in an opening montage in which Harry warns his apprentice of the dangers of mercury and inflammation.
When Niki is tasked with extracting his mentor’s hearing aids from the aforementioned safe, he discovers that his hyperacusis allows him to focus on the sounds of the individual wheels inside the locking mechanism, thus granting him the ability to crack safes. As luck would have it, his work soon allows him to cross paths with Uri (Lior Raz), a home security entrepreneur who uses his business as a front to steal valuable items from his clients; Uri just so happens to need a safe cracker, and Niki, given some plot developments, needs money anyway he can get it. Thus is born a tenuous working arrangement between the two, and if you’ve seen any thriller before, you know how it progresses.
But herein lies the beauty of Tuner: aside from Niki’s condition, there’s really nothing all that unique or novel about the fundamental premise, but it’s executed well enough as to still make it a satisfying and worthwhile whole. The performances perhaps do the lion’s share of the work in this regard, as they’re rather distinct and memorable across the board; Woodall, who’s been circled as a future star for some time (he’s already been cast in the next Lord of the Rings film), is perhaps given the film’s tallest task as its reserved, relatively detached protagonist who had the one thing in his life that mattered to him ripped away and must now fight to hold onto whatever he has left, and he more than answers the bill. Woodall delivers a rather reticent performance, but this isn’t to say disinterested, as he embeds into Niki enough nuance as to make you empathize with his, in many ways, tragic situation.
The writing of Roher and Ramsey—specifically with regard to characterization—is also deserving of praise, as each individual character, though perhaps a bit archetypal, feels distinct and deliberate, their very essence established within just a few lines of sharp dialogue. We learn everything we need to know about these characters almost as they’re introduced, and rarely does it feel unnatural or overly expository; Woodall also has solid chemistry with each supplementary performer, his uneasy rapport with the character of Uri, in particular, really serving as the film’s pulse.
And if Niki’s dynamic with Uri is Tuner’s pulse, his relationship with Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) is its heart, the driving force that gives the film its stakes for much of its runtime. A music composition student whom Niki, again, meets on a job, Ruthie is steadfast in her ambition: she’s known since her youth that she wants to be a composer, and she’s so close to achieving this goal that any tangential occurrence—even something as simple as a piano tuner coming in to do his job—is viewed as a distraction, a hindrance. This comes to include her blossoming relationship with Niki, initially feeling a sense of guilt as she allows personal whims to veer her off a course she’s been so firmly entrenched on throughout her entire life.
Though Woodall delivers an admirable performance and establishes himself as a more than capable lead, Liu is Tuner’s true standout, delivering a grounded performance that just feels real. There’s a scene midway through the film in which Ruthie employs Niki to fix her personal piano, an heirloom left to her by her late grandmother; the character, in this situation, is facing immense stress, just days away from conducting her, as of then, still unfinished composition in a performance that will effectively determine her future. Liu conveys this stress and the character’s generally heightened emotional state by subtly holding back tears; she’s audibly choked up as she explains to Niki that this piano was one of two keepsakes left to her by her grandmother—she lost the other, and now she’s broken this. She then, as quickly as she displayed the emotion, pieces herself back together as she realizes a relative stranger is standing in her apartment, again becoming the rather closed-off individual she had been to that point in the film.
It’s in this subtle moment in which Liu allows vulnerability to peek through that we, the audience, truly latch onto Ruthie as a character, adding depth, nuance, and a sense of authenticity to a person who, on page, was simply describing the origin of her piano. Liu and Woodall go on to showcase believable chemistry with each other as the relationship between Ruthie and Niki evolves, their rapport augmenting their individual performances throughout to give the film a throughline romance that doesn’t feel unnatural or forced.
Roher showcases ability and potential in his transition to narrative fiction, with his command of tone sticking out as particularly impressive. What starts as a straightforward, genuinely sharp comedy slowly transitions into a more traditional thriller, picking up elements of a romantic drama along the way; these tones never clash or feel discordant with one another, their progression feeling earned and quite natural thanks to the tight script, deliberate—but never slow—pacing, and the film’s technical prowess. Sound designer Maximilian Behrens is perhaps Tuner’s unsung hero, as the expansive, enthralling sound design is integral to this film’s efficacy; certain noises are often muted or amplified throughout to replicate the sensation of Niki’s condition, with the sound design consistently creating the bulk of the tension in what are supposed to be the film’s most anxiety-inducing sequences.
The film’s narrative occasionally falls victim to contrivance, particularly with regard to a lack of consequence or expected ramifications as the story ramps up. The most conspicuous example of this offense manifests at the beginning of the third act when a character acts in a way completely disloyal to how they had conducted themselves throughout the entire film to that point; it’s not a necessarily misconceived sequence, as one could list the reasons why this character would logically act in such a manner at that particular time, but this doesn’t mean that the abrupt pivot feels earned or natural in practice. It’s, again, a contrived, rather disorienting development that actively undermines the character in question, existing solely to manufacture tension in a film that, to that point, had earned it naturally.
Tuner (despite a memorable final line) perhaps doesn’t land as gracefully as it should, but the journey to that point is engaging and well-crafted enough to make the film worthy of your attention. It, in many ways, feels like a stepping stone—this said in the most complimentary way possible. It’s not overly ambitious, nor is it all that novel, but it’s an incredibly effective—and generally successful—version of what it wants to be, showcasing that the major parties involved are more than capable in their respective roles. Woodall and Liu are movie stars in waiting, and Roher has some genuine chops as a narrative filmmaker; Tuner, while itself having merit, has the feeling of a movie of a movie that audiences will look back on in five or 10 years to see where these three cut their teeth, so why not watch it in its initial theatrical run?
