For many, life is all about finding a consistent frequency, especially amid unforeseen upheaval. Young Niki (Leo Woodall) was once a piano prodigy, but an auditory condition rendered his dreams obsolete. His hearing is so sensitive that nearly every sound that isn’t normal dialogue can be a piercing razor to the eardrum. The hypersensitivity is actually a positive for his line of work as a piano tuner, where Niki works alongside mentor, father figure, and one time famous jazz pianist Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), adjusting pianos all across the tri-state area. Most pianos go unused and are there for show, but a select few, like for student pianist Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), mean the world to their customers. When helping Harry and his wife Marla after they’ve forgotten the combination to their personal safe, Niki researches online and discovers he can use his deficiency to crack combination locks.

One seemingly routine tuner check turns out to be anything but when Niki experiences a live theft attempt led by Uri (Lior Raz) and his family employees, who use a security business to steal valuables from clients. Seeing another combination safe, Niki lends his newfound talent and receives a cut of the earnings. He’s also now a part of the crew, and maybe he’s found his new calling, however illegitimate it is.

Tuner is unremarkable, and I’m certain I probably won’t think about it much upon the conclusion of this writing. But during my viewing, I was into its setup, and by the end I enjoyed the experience as a composed whole. It is a quaint, undemanding film that hints at the potential of better things ahead for its younger cast members and creator.

I’m not too familiar with Woodall’s work, but in Tuner, he has a quiet and intense charisma. The role isn’t too showy, but it does require an enigmatic magnet at the center of it, and he’s believable as such. There’s also a chameleon-esque, tortured artist quality that could be mined deeper as his career moves forward. His screentime with Liu, who broke onto the scene with 2022’s No Exit, features a fun, cute chemistry and some hidden depth Liu receives in the writing of her character. Tying it all up is Hoffman, here more of the comic relief early on before transitioning into the emotional, if predictable, fulcrum of the movie.

Tuner represents director Daniel Roher’s, an Oscar-winner who has only directed documentaries to this point, maiden voyage into narrative fiction filmmaking. His direction is energized in some scenes where he’s using a combination of composer Will Bates’ score or licensed music to create intricate sequences of safecracking. The way internal mechanisms in the safe are shown and inserted with Niki trying to find the sweet spot for the unlock, is very reminiscent of being at an intimate jazz concert where the performers get their bars to improvise solos. But when other parts of the film are left to their own devices and must stand on their own without the musical support, it’s where Roher’s filming can feel kind of rote, and it could just be because of the fact he’s never made a film like this before.

It’s hard to put Tuner into a specific genre. Roher’s script traverses across sweet buddy comedy early on through romance and heist crime, and finally climaxing with what could fit into the thriller classification. Even as it takes place in the expansive New York City (filmed in Toronto though), this is a decidedly smaller-scaled feature that would be right at home being released in the 1990s. At the heart of the movie is a story about being stuck in life, and who, or what, does it take to launch yourself out of the funk and into the next chapter as a new you. The ancillary people around this focus point of Tuner that aren’t Woodall or Liu feel present to just take space or add runtime, particularly the gangsters Niki spends time with as the movie progresses. One even says in the movie something to the effect of Niki stereotyping them as your average foreign criminal thieves before doing one of many criminal acts in the movie, a weird decision to call this out and not subvert expectations.

I can see a world where Tuner is looked at in a couple of years with surprise, found on Netflix or whatever the hot new streamer is by then. “Wow, I didn’t know Woodall and Liu were in this small little film about a piano fixer who turned into a safecracker.” While the film can be flat occasionally and sharp at other times, it’s never discordant for too long.

C+

Photo credits are courtesy of Black Bear and impawards.com.