30/05/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Tuner is hard to categorise. Part comedy, part love story, part thriller, it steps confidently from genre to genre but, perhaps more importantly, it works brilliantly in all of them.

Niki (Leo Woodall) is afflicted by the awful condition know as hyperacusis, which means that loud noises are like torture to him. This obliges him to go around New York City wearing ear protectors at all times. Once a promising musician, he still possesses the unerring ability to recognise any musical note and he now works alongside his employer and surrogate father, Harry (Dustin Hoffman), tuning pianos in a whole range of different settings.

When Harry accidentally locks something in his safe and forgets the combination, Niki realises that, if he removes his ear protectors, he can hear the tiniest sounds when he fiddles with the lock, a skill that, after a little practice, gives him the ability to crack safes. In a café, Niki and Harry bump into Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), an ambitious music student, currently at work on an important piano composition. Harry’s audacious attempt to pair the two of them up is initially unsuccessful, but it’s clear that something is going to happen between them.

And then chance places Niki into the orbit of Uri (Lior Raz) and his criminal gang.

Once aware of Niki’s newfound talent, Uri tells him that, if he ever needs to make some real money, he should give him a call. Niki has no intention of taking him up on the offer… until Harry suddenly falls ill and he and his wife, Marla (Tovah Feldshuh), lack the necessary funds to pay the hospital bill…

Question: how many crimes would be instantly erased in America if they had anything like a National Health Service?

Directed and co-written by Daniel Roher (with Robert Ramsey), Tuner carries me along with it, making me laugh out loud in its earlier sections before piling on the suspense as Niki becomes increasingly embroiled in criminal activity. It’s clear from early on that our protagonist is making some terrible decisions and yet his actions are always believable.

While Niki doesn’t have an awful lot to say for himself, Woodall manages to eloquently convey his inner turmoil as he heads deeper and deeper into the brown stuff and Tuner confirms the actor’s rising status as a leading man. Hoffman may not have an awful lot to do here, but has enough screentime to convey Harry’s utterly loveable character. Feldshuh and Liu are both excellent in their respective roles and even the villains of the piece, though suitably horrible when they want to be, are much more nuanced than we’ve come to expect of film baddies.

And then there’s the sound design, with original compositions by Will Bates, and a whole team of engineers recreating the accentuated sounds that Niki experiences when those ear protectors come off. When an alarm sounds, it’s utterly shocking. In the final stretches there’s an assured build up to a climactic musical scene, which I find genuinely thrilling and the film ends with what’s probably the funniest closing line I’ve heard in a very long time.

As I said earlier, this is hard to categorise, but this note-perfect piece is ridiculously easy to score.

5 stars

Philip Caveney