Tuner

dir: David Roher

2026

If the title and the existence of this film prove nothing more, it’s that you can make a film out of anything, any job, any idea, if you’ve got the right angle.

Tuner is literally about a piano tuner. How’s that for specific and literal accuracy in film titles?

Even though it’s completely contemporary, this film somehow feels like a throwback, like something from a bygone age and era, and it’s not just because Dustin Hoffman is in it or that it’s about someone who works on pianos. As an example, who even has or plays pianos anymore? Even within the context of the film, none of the people getting their pianos tuned even remember the last time someone played their piano – as a prelude to some special occasion, they’ll get someone out to make sure if the ivories get tinkled, they’ll at least be in key.

That being the case, we would imagine there aren’t that many piano tuners still around. A dying breed. Harry Horowitz (Hoffman) has clearly been doing it since pianos were invented, and in fact was there tuning up the harpsichord when Mozart first played “Chopsticks”. No, but he did know many of the greats, including Herbie Hancock, who gets several mentions and even a cameo, and Harry has a van with his name on it. Harry gets driven to all these places with pianos, but the person doing all the work is Niki (Leo Woodall). His apprentice. Apprentice piano tuner. Just like in any trade, the apprentice does all the work and the ‘master’ rolls around wanking on about mercury levels in fishes and such.

The young man has ear plugs permanently in his ears, and noise cancelling headphones on top of that. Hyperacusis. It’s a real thing, look it up. Clearly has very delicate hearing, and yet perfect pitch as well. None of that probably can block out Dustin Hoffman’s constant braying and droning, but that won’t be a problem for too long.

That’s the stage of Hoffman’s career that we’re at now. He’s an aged ‘colour’ guy there to inspire the younger protagonist but not take up too much time or space. Hoffman really is around long enough only to practically force Niki into interacting with a young composer he meets at a musical academy where he’s tuning the pianos prior to a big performance.

As is the logic in all movies, shy people are seen as needing obnoxious but well-meaning older people to bring them together, break their iciness, and then let them have a montage or two together, and that’s exactly what’s needed here. Niki maybe be allergic to loud noises and general ambient noise, but Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) is highly strung and desperate for approval and affirmation. She initially thinks, given the overalls / boiler suit that Niki is a blue collar working class oik, but needless to say, since he’s the protagonist, not only does he have perfect pitch but he’s incredibly knowledgeable and adept in the musical field beyond what someone who dresses like him would be expected to be.

That class aspect fades in and out of the consciousness of the flick, which is weird, because money, the lack thereof, the need for, the abundance in some places, and the complete absence in others, formulates the structure of the plot through which Niki swims.

He is not motivated by greed. This is important. Niki is the quintessential holy fool character compelled, almost tricked into doing something terribly illegal, but not out of greed, or from feeling financially inadequate compared to Ruthie or anyone else.

When Harry falls ill, and starts racking up massive hospital bills since he has no medical insurance, who else but Niki is going to pay them? When Ruthie mentions that she lost her grandmother’s watch on the train, and Niki has an opportunity to replace it, he does it as a gift for her, not because he lusts after very expensive watches.

When some vicious Israeli crims are trying to drill their way into a safe, and Niki, having recently accidentally discovered that his superlative hearing actually makes him a competent safecracker, cracks the safe for them, he doesn’t do it for gain; he does it so they’ll stop using that awful sounding drill.

When he steals a heap of ill-gotten gains later on, it’s not for his own gain, oh no no no; it’s entirely to help out Harry’s wife, because Harry was a shmuck who didn’t plan ahead to protect his wife from the inevitable, and if Niki doesn’t do it, no-one, not even superstar mayor Zohran Mamdani, will do anything about it.

Oh so noble, so fucking noble… It would almost be grating but Leo Woodall, who I have seen in a few other things and not really noticed that much, does a really decent job with the Niki character here. It’s mostly from the way he carries himself, but there’s also a lot in the performance itself, in his interactions with people, in his wariness. The initial ‘meet cute’ with Ruthie becomes an “extended awkwardness” as they defensively act abrasive and negative towards each other, and yet a montage later they’re cuddling and having sex (maybe at the piano) like they were always meant to be.

It still always feels like theirs is a temporary idyll, a fling until something else comes along (for her, not someone else but something else, a job she’d sell her soul for working for The Maestro Jean Reno), but Niki seems like he’d sacrifice anything and everything for her, because he really doesn’t have anything else, other than Harry and Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) as his surrogate parents.

What he’s doing for his solution to all his problems, though…

Uri (Lior Raz) runs a security company. Uri is clearly very good at getting clients for his security services. Uri is a very loathsome prick though, and he and his two underlings operate under the theory that rich people are so rich and so lacking for meaning in their lives that they amass collections of expensive crap (watches and jewellery) where each new individual addition brings less pleasure than the last one, bringing the law of diminishing marginal returns to life.

The first Rolex Submariner or Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso in your collection may bring you a major tingle in your pink bits, but by the time you get your 30th, eh, you barely feel a thing other than dead inside.

Further on from that, almost as a self-justification, they steal from their clients, but not so the clients would notice, like, a watch or a ring here or there, not the whole safe. If the whole safe gets cleaned out, then they’d blame their security provider. But if one or two things go missing, eh, you fire the maid / get her deported and move on.

This is of course a bullshit rationale, but it’s the only way Niki is going to get money, so it’s the direction the flick goes in. Like all crime stories it only ever gets nastier as it goes on, and the thing is, it’s not like Niki doesn’t know what an awful piece of shit Uri is right from the start: he’s the kind of guy who goes from flattering you to threatening your nearest and dearest with torture in the space of the same sentence. And he looks at Niki like he wants to eat him, and I don’t mean that in a sexual way.

Uri may be playing a stereotype, one which I’m not going to get into, but he’s a horrifying character in a flick where shit gets so violent and so cruel (so quickly) that it might overwhelm some viewers who thought they were just going to get some light jazz and some Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson anecdotes and Dustin Hoffman doing yiddishkeit in between arguments about pastrami and bagels.

I think it makes a bit of a difference, a lot of a difference, that Niki is not a character who is embracing his corruption, the corruption of the people around him, the acceptance that you’ve just got to grab what you can before the music stops. It is, perhaps, somewhat unbelievable that he can basically be so naïve and pure of heart when he’s a genius with a photographic memory at the same time, but the story is going to go where the story is going to go.

And some of those places are pretty groanworthy. In a city of so many millions of people, wouldn’t you know it, Niki and Uri’s crew steal a couple of watches that not only belong to someone Niki will interact with later in the film, but it’s set up as the grand gesture Niki has to perform (and be mutilated for) in order to restore himself in Ruthie’s quivering eyes when everything falls apart? And then even when, at the hands of brutal men, he gets what he was after anyway (probably the least plausible part of the movie, considering these are people who’ve killed for far less), how he gets his grand moment (as if it was the last drumming performance in Whiplash) to shine, despite all that’s happened to him?

And yet, how else would we have wanted the movie to end? It’s probably the right ending, I have no idea.

I realise in writing about it, it sounds like I’m being overly critical, or that I didn’t like it or that it didn’t hang together well. I loved this movie, and I think it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It’s an amazing composition that hangs together beautifully, and there is a warmth to it that I thoroughly enjoyed, and even if I didn’t understand what was happening at the end (or how, since considering what happens to Niki, he goes from that and not having played in years to doing a virtuoso piano performance a master would have had difficulty pulling off, just to prove a point), I found it thrilling. I found the film thrilling, and found myself desperately hoping that Niki would stay at least one step ahead of the comeuppance that I knew had to be coming his way.

Tuner was a lot of fun.

9 times that was quite my tempo out of 10

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“He is my tuning apprentice. He's more like my nephew, though we're not related. And I'll tell you one thing, he is very eligible. But he has a hearing condition, as you can see from his plugs, which are not hearing aids, although that's a common mistake. He's not being rude, it's doctor's orders, and did I mention, he is very eligible.” – stop talking already, Harry - Tuner

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2341128985/