Tuner Review

Leo Woodall Gives Tuner Its Pulse

By: Marc Kozak

Tuner

Leo Woodall Gives Tuner Its Pulse

By: Marc Kozak

As a childhood and now very lapsed piano player, I always get a little thrill whenever there is any kind of pianist representation in the movies. I remember thinking there was something magical about the man who would periodically come to tune our old family piano; he would poke and prod at the interior organs of the instrument like some kind of surgeon, tightening screws with strange tools, bending the note produced by each piano key in a way that made it sound temporarily out of sync with the normal sounds of reality, eventually dialing things in to the familiar register of do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-da. The best part was when the tuner was finished with his work and he’d do a final test of the full set of keys, which meant playing the most beautiful and complicated pieces I’d ever heard. Not only could this man fix the piano, but he could also play it marvelously, with the casual nonchalance of someone cleaning up the dishes after cooking an incredible meal. Surely the piano tuner was a position of the highest respect, a god amongst mere musicians.

As you’ll see in Daniel Roher’s Tuner, that sadly isn’t the case in reality. Most pianos these days are expensive curiosities for the wealthy, nothing more than part of the décor, while the tuner is akin to a glorified maintenance man. Niki White (Leo Woodall), apprentice to long-time New York City piano tuner Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), drives around the city refurbishing pianos for parties and events held for the city’s elites. He goes about his work seriously, demanding silence for the few hours it takes him to do his job, which often bemuses and perplexes homeowners and housekeepers who don’t see what the big deal is. The quiet is necessary for reasons other than Niki’s respect for the craft – he suffers from hyperacusis, a condition that causes an increased sensitivity to sound and a low tolerance for environmental noise. Niki always has earbuds in and even adds noise-canceling headphones on top of that to keep out everyday noise on the streets.

Niki seems fairly content with his life, but his kindly mentor Harry is old and starting to have health problems, eventually getting hospitalized after a heart attack. He and his wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) can’t afford the medical bills, somberly resigned to the fact that many sacrifices will have to be made. At nearly the same time, Niki is out tuning a piano for a wealthy client when he stumbles upon a small group of thieves drilling into the homeowner’s safe in another room. In a rush to get them out of there and return to his work in silence, he uses his heightened hearing to get the safe open, which impresses the thieves’ leader, Uri (Lior Raz, stealing most of the scenes he’s in), and opens the door for Niki to make money via future heists in order to help out Harry with his medical bills.

" The real joy of the movie is spending time in the quiet moments with these characters, which mostly carries us through the more mundane crime thriller elements. "

You can see where this is going – a good man turns to crime in order to do good things, and it works for a while until eventually it doesn’t. It’s a story we’ve seen a million times, and Tuner certainly follows the structural template to a somewhat disappointing degree. Still, Niki’s unique hearing and downtrodden somberness make for an unusual hero, and his exasperated interactions with Uri and his buffoonish young crew are a joy to watch. Woodall, who you may recognize from the second season of The White Lotus and the Netflix series One Day, is on the verge of stardom, and it’s easy to see why – he has the strong, silent type down pat, able to exude charisma and mystery with nothing more than a glance or half smirk.

These charms even work their magic on Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a determined and initially standoffish student pianist, hard at work on her own original compositions with the goal of attracting the attention of renowned composer Marius Maissner (Jean Reno). After some good-natured parental encouragement from Harry and Marla, Niki eventually begins a relationship with Ruthie, who he clearly respects as a serious musician with original ideas and big ambitions. As he starts to open up and the pair begin to get close, we learn that he wants for Ruthie the kinds of chances that he never got for himself. Niki was once an elite pianist himself until his condition made it too painful, even after years of exposure therapy, forcing him to bury his dreams deep inside himself and give up playing the piano for good.

The movie’s final act dutifully brings all of the various elements together – Uri and his crew start to get recklessly bold while threatening Niki and his loved ones if he tries to walk away, trapping him in an increasingly dangerous life of crime. Harry and Marla suspect that Niki is up to no good when they discover he has been paying off large chunks of their medical debt. Even Ruthie gets brought into the web of misdeeds when the composer Maissner reveals a fairly silly and convoluted tie to Niki’s crime spree. Everything unravels in predictably messy fashion, even as it lands with decent emotional resonance thanks to Niki’s likability and our desire to see him through the mess he got himself into.

The real joy of the movie is spending time in the quiet moments with these characters, which mostly carries us through the more mundane crime thriller elements. Niki and Ruthie’s relationship is particularly interesting in the ways in which it awakens several dormant passions in Niki. He seemed resigned to a simple and unspectacular life alone until he came across Ruthie, a woman with a real drive and purpose. Niki starts to come alive and feels he now has something to fight for, which triggers further anxiety and desperation to get out of his criminal habits. These are two carefully considered characters that feel authentic and believable, and I could’ve spent a lot more time just hanging out with the pair.

Roher, who won a Best Documentary Oscar for 2022’s Navalny, fares well in his first fictional feature, nailing a lot of small details in both setting and character, making Tuner feel like a drama grounded in the real world. It’s a great concept with great performances by great actors, held back only slightly by the story’s inability to break free of the usual trappings of the crime thriller genre, particularly in its final third. Still, there’s an easy charm and pleasing laid-back energy to both the story and Woodall’s winning performance, both of which make Tuner more than worthy of your time.