Tuner
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: R
Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes
Stars: Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, Havana Rose Liu
Writer/Director: Daniel Roher
Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival
Dustin Hoffman is the marquee name in this snappily unique caper flick, and he more than earns his keep as an aging piano tuner with a heart of gold — but the breakthrough star here is young Leo Woodall as Niki, a one-time piano prodigy who now suffers from a condition that makes even the slightest sounds pierce his eardrums like an air horn.
Wearing both ear plugs and sound-cancelling headphones, Niki uses his keen hearing to tune pianos without benefit of tuning forks or electronic equipment. Through an only-in-the-movies sequence of events, Niki also discovers his disability is a super power when it comes to safe cracking, as he can hear the tumblers falling into place as he turns the dial.
Of course, the wrong people get wind of Niki’s unique talent and press him into helping them make a grand tour of the Wall Safes of the Rich and Famous.
First-time fiction feature director Daniel Roher won an Oscar for his 2022 documentary Navalny (is it coincidental that his villains in this movie are Russian?), and he uses his considerable docu chops to visually explain just how the innards of combination safes work. But he’s also designed a briskly paced, engaging story peopled with characters we certainly don’t mind spending a couple of hours with.
As Henry, the veteran piano tuner, Hoffman pours on the grizzled charm. So lovable is Henry that we don’t doubt for a minute Niki would endanger his own future by turning to safecracking to pay the old man’s crushing medical bills. Havana Rose Liu (TV’s Hal & Harper) charms as Henry’s new girlfriend, Ruthie, a conservatory piano student who first falls for her tuner’s perfect pitch, then for his pitch-perfect persona. Israeli actor Lior Raz brings offbeat, kind-of-dangerous charm to the criminal ringleader, and the always-wonderful Jean Reno (My Penguin Friend) pops up briefly as a piano professor who figures in the film’s least-believable (yet ultimately forgivable) plot twist.
As for Woodall, he has been hovering at the fringes of true stardom for years, bringing unexpected nuance to too-hunky-to-be-true characters who might otherwise have disappeared into the wallpaper (the deceptively observant U.S. Army driver in Nuremberg, the not-who-he-claims-to-be lothario on White Lotus, the fickle boytoy in Bridget Jones:Mad About the Boy). Here, Woodall embodies a young man who seems to go through life exhaling a perpetual sigh; resigned to enduring a physical disability that will forever keep him at ears-length distance from the rest of the world. When his humdrum life turns suddenly both dangerous and romantic, Niki finds it pretty difficult not to just go along for the ride. Woodall masterfully evokes wonder, worry, and suspicion as Niki’s insular world flies into a dizzying whirl.
The real triumph here, though, is for first-time feature writer/director Roher, who, while masterfully conducting the complex and sometimes dissonant parts of a music-based caper flick, has created a film as fine-tuned as a Carnegie Hall Steinway.
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