I can’t see why anyone wouldn’t enjoy Tuner. It’s a heist caper as well as a romance and while it hits some familiar beats it hits them in new ways. Set in the piano-tuning world – which may be a first – it’s sound-driven (jazz, classical and more) and has something to say about music, identity, artistic envy. In addition it stars Dustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall, who have cracking chemistry.
You will not have realised that bird song can hurt
It’s a first feature film from Daniel Roher (otherwise an Oscar-winning documentary maker), who proves here that he has equal talent for fiction. Hoffman plays Harry, a New York piano tuner who once played jazz with Herbie Hancock and the like – although maybe he didn’t. (He seems to be slipping into dementia.) Woodall is his colleague Niki, who is like a son to him and his wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh). Niki suffers from a hearing disability, hyperacusis. This makes him so sensitive to sound that most noise is painful for him. He wears earplugs at all times and sometimes noise-cancelling headphones on top. He was once a piano prodigy but his playing days are over. He is quiet, withdrawn, but Woodall brings such charisma you are rooting for him from the off.
Harry and Niki mostly work for rich people whose pianos are decorative and rarely, if ever, put to use. Those silver-framed photos have to go somewhere. One evening, when Niki is tuning a Steinway in a grand house, he disturbs a gang of thieves who realise his incredible hearing means he can crack open safes. As Harry is now in hospital running up medical bills Marla can’t pay, Niki needs money and agrees to commit more robberies. However, what begins as a side hustle quickly degenerates as he’s thrust into increasingly dangerous situations, any of which might jeopardise his burgeoning romance with Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a student composer and pianist. Woodall and Liu also have cracking chemistry.
We’ve seen a good guy getting out of his depth with bad people many times before. But Roher is completely in command of his material, keeping it all as taut as a snare drum (or any other drum of your choosing). The score is made up of lively jazz, pounding classical, but also the auditory distortions that take us directly into Niki’s world, as created by Johnnie Burn who won an Oscar for his work on The Zone of Interest, and once suffered from hyperacusis himself. You will not have heard anything like it. You will not have realised that bird song can hurt. Hoffman, needless to say, is immensely watchable, and provides much of the comic relief, while Woodall brings depth to a character who takes a while to explain himself, as he will eventually do in one blistering, angry outburst. But even when he’s not saying a word, he will hold your attention.
It is all rather conveniently tied-up at the end, and it is plainly daft in places. What, all these robberies, and no police investigations? There’s also a subplot concerning a bracelet that becomes rather far-fetched…but no matter. It has a running time of 107 minutes and for every one of those minutes I was thoroughly entertained.
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