A sharp, engaging thriller with a novel premise, “Tuner” puts the viewer into a world where to hear is to feel excruciating pain. The film’s protagonist, a young man named Niki Wright (Leo Woodall), possesses the rare talent of perfect pitch, which makes him a more-than-apt apprentice to piano repairman Harry Horowitz.
In the early portion of the movie, directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher (making his fiction feature debut), Niki’s life is better than tolerable. Harry, played by Dustin Hoffman in happy-go-lucky-senior mode, is good company, a father figure practically, and work is steady and rewarding. It almost compensates for the fact that, along with his gift, Niki has a curse: hyperacusis, a hearing condition that makes everyday sound intolerable. Which is why Niki’s always got earbuds in, and why he augments them with noise-canceling headphones when he’s out on the street.
Niki discovers a new talent in the most innocent way possible. Harry’s getting old, and forgetful, and in his house there’s a safe with a forgotten combination. With Niki’s ear and overall precision, perhaps he can crack the safe? He can. Easy enough. And so he goes on his way. As he bites into a burrito by himself on a work break, we see that loneliness is bugging him. But soon his life will be filled with other people, some less desirable than others.
Most of Niki’s clients are rich idlers who never use their high-end keyboards; Niki is mostly called in on days leading up to the piano owners’ events, where a player may entertain the guests. One evening on a job, he’s bugged by banging noises upstairs. This is distracting. He discovers some rough-looking fellows trying to drill into a safe. They’re “security” for the house owners, says their leader, Uri; they need to retrieve something. Just to get the noise to stop, Niki cracks that safe too. Uri is impressed. Impressed enough to inveigle Niki into going on some excursions with him.
Niki has two motivations for a life of crime. One, he wants to help out Harry, who’s landed in the hospital and is facing a tsunami of medical bills with his stalwart wife, Marla (legendary Tovah Feldshuh). Two, he wants to impress a young pianist/composer named Ruthie, who’s prepping a piece to perform in front of her idol, the composer Marius Maissner.
Because his various conditions have made him socially awkward, he fixates on a story Ruthie tells him about a pearl-strap Rolex watch she got from a relative and lost. She herself is mystified as to why such an expert tuner doesn’t actually play the piano himself. Niki remains cagey on this point, but doesn’t let his secrets dampen his enthusiasm, as a pre-date montage scored to Dean Martin’s rendition of “Almost Like Being In Love” demonstrates.
One night out with Uri turns Niki’s life even further upside down. It involves guns, cocaine, a home aquarium, and a slip of paper containing multiple passwords that Niki is forced to tear up and swallow. And here we learn that Niki also has a photographic memory. Where the passwords lead is another crossroad for the character.
Director Roher won his Oscar for “Navalny,” a 2022 film about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, made after his poisoning but before he fatally succumbed to it. So we know he’s schooled in the ways of Russian bad actors, and the character of Uri presumably benefits from that. Israeli actor Lior Raz plays the character as an equally deft wielder of both carrot and stick.
As Niki, Woodall often has to play a craft-confident, anxious bundle of nerves simultaneously; his concentration during the safe-cracking sequences compels you to join him in a cold sweat at times. While I don’t know a thing about safes or how to open them aside from the word “tumbler,” Roker and Woodall make you believe they do, and the micro-views inside various safes feel authentic. As Ruthie, Havana Rose Liu matches Woodall in determination; while Niki only ever wants to just get through another day, Ruthie’s got goals, and she seems to inspire Niki in that respect.
One wishes the movie’s ending were less abrupt for several reasons. The main one, though, is that we’d like to spend more time with these two characters.
