Tuner is a wry and classically competent crime comedy so full of charm that it almost coasts by on sheer vibes alone. Beautifully anchored by a soulful performance from Leo Woodall, it falls apart in an unconvincing and trite third act, but everything up to it soars.
Woodall plays Niki, a tuner and piano virtuoso suffering from a form of hypersensitivity to his hearing, which has left him isolated from the world. Even the most minute sound can cause him distress, and he works in New York, one of the loudest places on the planet. But it's this sensitivity that makes him such an excellent tuner, and with the help of his surrogate father, Harry (Dustin Hoffman), he makes a living on his own terms.
One day, he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), another master pianist, and falls in love. Before their relationship can bloom, Harry suffers a heart attack, and can't pay his inhumane medical bills. Through a series of misfortunes, Niki falls into a bad crowd of gangster, who have use for his finely attuned ears as a safe cracker.
If the directing from documentarian Daniel Roher wasn't so assured, all of this would come off as annoyingly twee and clumsy. But watch how smoothly Roher keeps the story moving, elegantly keeping us in the rhythm of Niki's hectic life, so we never start to question how rapidly things deteriorate into absurdity. By the time we even look around, it's already too late.
Helping things along with said magic trick is Hoffman who, while clearly getting up there in age, is as charming and fun to watch as ever. His part isn't a big one, more of a glorified cameo, but none of his star power has waned over the years. You could make an entire film about just him and Woodall fixing pianos and bantering together, and it would be as riveting as any heist the film can offer.
Sadly, the film collapses in a third act involving every tired trope you see in stories like this. It even manages to tie in some uncomfortably kitschy Holocaust plotting to the mix, which comes out of left field and never sits right with the otherwise breezy story. Luckily, Woodall sells even the clunkiest material as the pained man wanting more from his life, who can't seem to not sabotage himself out of some deep-rooted belief he's not allowed happiness. It's a performance that makes us want to see him succeed, even when he's at his worst.
After a rough patch, Tuner does pull itself together for one final flourish, which almost saves the whole thing. Not quite, but almost. It's a little self-satisfied and smug about how neatly it ties things together, but once again Roher understands how to tell a story so well that it would be hard to sulk about it.
Years ago, this would have been a delightful weekend rental. A solid, unfussy mid-budget title you pick up every couple of years or so to revisit the best bits. Now, it'll probably disappear into the depths of streaming somewhere. If you spot it, give it a go. You probably won't love it, but that's not exactly a bad thing, either.
Sometimes we need things that we just like, and there's nothing wrong with that.
