It’s built around a methodical, arcane and dying artistic profession set in a digitized, short-attention span world.
There’s a love story whose backdrop is the classical music where virtuosos practice their art, and piano tuners practice theirs.
And a heist — or heists — threaten to come between our mismatched but complementary lovers.
As the kids used to say back in olden times, “Tuner” is a movie that hits all the notes to be “my jam.”
But an untidy narrative cluttered with loose ends and wildly illogical twists and a lead scripted and played as “passive” spoil veteran documentary maker Daniel Roher’s fictional feature film debut. “Tuner” sings, here and there, but musical montages of a love affair and the crimes that accompany it never let it jell or jam.
Director and co-writer Roher, who did “Navalny,” “Once Were Brothers” and “Blink,” gives us a “hero” with hyperacusis — accute hearing sensitivity that forces him to wear constantly wear earplugs and even noise-canceling headphones to cope with New York at its loudest.
That forced Niki (Leo Woodall) to give up a promising performing career. Now pushing 30, he’s the long-serving apprentice to Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), an ancient and talkative mentor who rides along with his protege as he services New York’s better Bösendorfer’s, Steinways and Yamahas and gets them into tune with his experience and his unerring but over-sensitive ears.
Niki has “perfect pitch.” Give him a piano and a room that’s quiet enough and he can make all 88 keys sing perfectly on key, even though “We never use the ‘p’ word” in his line of work. Tuning is own art, with imperfections and idiosyncratic biases distinct to each tuner.
Old school Harry charms the well-heeled and often rude customers — this one has Billy Joel playing at a benefit at his house, that one would love for them to fix the toilet, while they’re at it. Niki does his work in the isolation of a condition that seems comparable to deafness, with silence an elusive goal of his work and his life in a cacaphonous city.
When Harry, a bit deaf himself, locks his hearing aids in an old safe by mistake, he and adoring but scolding wife Marla (the great Tovah Feldshuh) implore Niki to give it a try.
A Youtube tutorial or two, a little listening and a bit of fiddling later, Niki succeeds. He doesn’t need a safecracker’s stethescope. His faulty ears turn out to be his superpower.
Those ears and his self-effacing manner and expertise are what get the attention of musical composition student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), manic to get a piano sextet finished and calmed out of her fury by Niki’s cool, professional and very musical sensitivities.
Harry tried to set them up, but that didn’t play. But Niki’s chance to be her knight in tuning armor — a disabled knight she learns soon enough — triggers a love affair.
As Niki has stumbled into some shady security company thieves who can’t crack a safe without making a racket in Niki’s workplace one evening, that’s going to get complicated. Bullying goon Uri (Lior Raz) and his Israeli henchmen and relatives lure Niki into some easy money.
They set up security systems for clients, know when the entitled rich are out of town, and then pilfer their safes — taking care to not steal things traceable to them.
“Tuner” kind of goes off the logical rails right from the moment Niki starts stealing to buy Harry’s tuner biz van and pay his mentor’s medical bills.
These are sloppy, casual burglaries. Uri & Crew are unconcerned about noise, finger prints, who sees them or who knows they know what’s in these safes, and Niki follows their lead.
As the “jobs” grow more frequent, matters escalate and violence enters the picture. Niki’s hearing is easily emperiled, and once Uri figures that out, an air horn is the only weapon he needs.
Luckily for Niki, his condition conveniently comes and goes when the script requires it. And it turns out he’s got another “superpower,” which could come in handy down the line.
Woodall’s passivity in the part was a scripted choice and any resemblence to early films of Tom Hardy — for instance — vanishes as Niki may look brawny and tough, but is just a sensitive musician with vulnerable hearing and a lost cause in a fight.
Woodall, of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” and “Nuremberg,” is more convincing than compelling in the lead role.
Liu (“Bottoms,” “No Exit”) is utterly convincing as a frazzled musician calmed by this handsome working class bloke who knows a lot more about music than she first guesses.
The Israeli Raz, of “Operation Finale” and “Six Underground,” is perfectly cast as a heavy and a guy in the right place at the right time. Israeli villains are all the rage these days.
But Hoffman can’t tone down the “cutesey” in his performance to save his Oscar-winning butt. He’s made “grating” the calling card of much of his late career work.
The jazz and classical musical milieu with underworld grit flourishes pulled me into “Tuner.” Jazz great Herbie Hanock even has a cameo. But every few minutes, a contrived scene, a hammy flourish of performance or some other false note took me right out of it.
Rating: R, graphic violence, sex, nudity, profanity
Cast: Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, Lior Raz, Tovah Feldshuh and Dustin Hoffman.
Credits: Directed by Daniel Roher, scripted by Daniel Rober and Robert Ramsey. A Black Bear release.
Running time: 1:47
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