Tuner may feel familiar, but its fab sound design, slickly edited heists and strong performances make it feel refreshingly sharp, opines Sreeju Sudhakaran.
Key Points
- Tuner features Niki, a piano tuner with hyperacusis, whose heightened sensitivity to sound makes him an exceptional safe-cracker.
- The film, starring Leo Woodall as Niki and Dustin Hoffman as his mentor Harry, explores a familiar heist plot.
- Despite a predictable narrative trajectory, ‘Tuner’ effectively uses Niki’s impairment during heist sequences, creating immersive and tense scenes.
Daniel Roher’s Tuner arrives with a premise that feels strikingly familiar.
In fact, parallels can easily be drawn with Baby Driver, since both films feature gifted protagonists living with hearing-related impairments, both revolve around heists, both wrap a love story into the chaos, and both involve dangerous betrayals from within their own circles.
Yet, while that familiarity does lend the film a degree of predictability in how its pieces eventually fall into place, what works for Tuner is the sharp rhythm in which those pieces are made to fall into their respective places.
You may sense where the story is headed right when the plot kicks in. For instance, when the protagonist gifts a stolen watch to his girlfriend, you immediately know that moment will return later with consequence.
But the film consistently finds inventive ways to make the familiar feel compelling, particularly through its use of sound and in exploring the lead character’s condition.
What’s The Plot of Tuner?
Niki (Leo Woodall) works as an apprentice at Harry’s (Dustin Hoffman) piano-tuning company. Harry serves as both mentor and surrogate father figure.
Niki suffers from hyperacusis, a condition that makes him extremely sensitive to loud noises, forcing him to constantly shield his ears from overwhelming sound. Once a gifted piano prodigy, he now channels his affliction into tuning instruments with uncanny precision.
That same heightened sensitivity eventually reveals another unexpected talent to himself: Safe-cracking. Soon enough, his unusual abilities attract the attention of a group of Israeli thieves led by Uri (Lior Raz).
Niki also develops a relationship with Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), an ambitious young pianist.
A Familiar Narrative That Works Within Its Framing
Tuner initially unfolds as a warm mentor-student drama between Harry and Niki, opening with a light-hearted sequence where Harry passionately lectures him about errr… tuna (tuner, tuna… geddit?).
The scene immediately establishes the cheerful bonding between the two characters, while the film’s brisk montage editing cleverly captures how wealthy clients view their profession as something almost trivial, often treating them less like skilled craftsmen and more like repairmen summoned to fix Wi-Fi or plumbing.
The pianos themselves become a striking symbol of hollow upper-class indulgence, sitting untouched in lavish homes whose owners barely understand why the instrument even needs tuning if no one plays it anymore.
In many ways, those neglected pianos mirror Niki’s own condition, a gifted musician whose talent, much like the instruments he repairs, feels tragically underused and forgotten.
Sadly, Dustin Hoffman’s role becomes more limited once the narrative pivots towards the romance between Niki and Ruthie and the criminal world surrounding the heists. Still, Harry remains vital to the emotional core of the story, serving as a quiet catalyst for many of the decisions that follow.
As mentioned earlier, the broad strokes of Tuner feel like a concert audiences have heard before.
If you narrate the plot to someone unfamiliar with the film, they would probably react like Marty McFly pointing out that he has ‘seen this one before and it is a classic’.
You know the moment Niki gets pulled into the world of robbery, it will eventually cost him dearly after a point.
You know his choices will strain his relationship with Ruthie.
You know the climax will involve him overcoming his handicap in some triumphant fashion.
Tuner rarely strays from that expected trajectory, and its occasionally slow-burn pacing does little to disguise those narrative beats.
Sound Design and Performances Shine
Where the film truly comes in kicking, however, is in the way it utilises Niki’s impairment during the heist sequences.
The sound design and editing are exceptional here, immersing us in the way Niki perceives the faint clicks of a safe’s internal mechanisms while battling intrusive external noise. Some of these sequences are staged through slick, stylish energy, while a couple of others pulse with tension, particularly a terse break-in involving a Korean gangster’s hideout.
One standout stretch arrives in the third act, where the film crosscuts between a robbery and a piano recital performance. The music amplifies both the mounting tension Niki finds himself in and the emotional crescendo of the concert, creating the movie’s most riveting moment.
The final scene, where Niki and Ruthie face each other once again, ending with a callback to their first meeting, is also likely to linger in your memory.
The direction, editing, score and performances come together beautifully in that moment, with Leo Woodall delivering particularly strong work. This is quite the attention-grabbing performance from the young actor, known for his earlier roles in The White Lotus S2 and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
Havana Rose Liu is equally committed, especially during the emotionally charged recital sequence.
Dustin Hoffman remains effortlessly endearing whenever he appears, while Tovah Feldshuh is quite genial in her role as Harry’s wife.
Lior Raz injects restrained menace into a character who initially appears light-hearted and wants simply to take advantage of his rich targets’ callous hoarding nature.
French screen legend Jean Reno turns up in the third act as a celebrated composer Ruthie desperately hopes to impress with her performance.
