{"id":13678,"date":"2026-05-31T23:46:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T06:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13678"},"modified":"2026-05-31T23:46:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T06:46:22","slug":"tuner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/?p=13678","title":{"rendered":"Tuner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tuner<\/em> comes to us from director\/co-writer Daniel Roher, who’s only ever made documentaries up until now. In fact, Dustin Hoffman is pretty much the only recognizable name attached to this picture, and he’s only involved in a brief supporting capacity. Just as well, honestly — this is exactly the kind of movie that probably would’ve been ruined if it had been given a bigger budget and more scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the story of Nick “Nicky” White, played by Leo Woodall. This guy used to be a bona fide genius-level musical prodigy, right up until he manifested a bad case of hypersensitive hearing. It took years of therapy before he could reasonably function in everyday society, and playing music remains a physical impossibility. Even as it is, he has to wear earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones everywhere he goes. Oh, and Nicky’s parents died when he was still young, so throw that foundational trauma onto the pile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter Harry Horowitz (Hoffman), who’s been tuning and fixing pianos for the past several decades. He took on Nicky as a kind of surrogate nephew, teaching him the tricks of the trade. Not that a virtuoso with hyper-sensitive ears ever needed much in the way of training. And eventually, Nicky finds a new practical use for his unique abilities: safecracking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A short while later, Nicky crosses paths with Uri, played by Lior Raz. He’s an Israeli immigrant running a “security company” with two of his relatives (played by Gil Cohen and Nissan Sakira), using their business as a front to steal from wealthy clients. And these criminals find out that Nicky has a natural skill for breaking into safes. Right when Harry’s getting old enough that his medical bills are piling up. It’s all downhill from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get this out of the way, the film is explicitly clear in showing that Harry and his wife (Marla, played by Tovah Feldshuh) are both Jewish, and both are played by Jewish actors. Hell, Roher himself is Jewish. So no, this isn’t a case of making Jews into the villains, there’s no antisemitism going on here. Though Uri’s connection to the Holocaust serves a crucial plot point later on. (Don’t ask.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Side note: I can’t confirm that Woodall is Jewish. But between his roles in this and Nuremberg<\/em>, I have to wonder.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as the movie is concerned, it’s much more important that Uri and his relatives are immigrants. They talk a big game about how hard it is to make it in the USA for an immigrant with a funny accent. And they justify their thefts with the rationale that they’re only stealing from wealthy predatory assholes who won’t miss whatever happens to go missing from the safe. Conveniently glossing over the poor working-class housekeepers who get blamed for the thefts and lose their jobs over something they didn’t do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the film unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that Uri’s justification is pure pigshit. It’s hard to buy the whole “steal from the rich and down with capitalist exploitation” line when Uri gets increasingly involved with different breeds of criminal and all their ill-gotten gains get spent on coke-fueled parties and flatscreen TVs and whatnot. Moreover, regardless of what accent they have or where they came from, there’s little doubt that Uri and his relatives would have more success in America if they weren’t such self-centered, short-sighted, greedy, idiot thugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, Uri does have a valid point about the entitled wealthy asshats. It’s repeatedly shown that Nicky and Harry are busting their asses driving out to these huge lavish houses, tuning and repairing pianos that nobody ever plays. These asshole clients are paying $5K (Nicky himself quotes that number out loud) simply to maintain a decoration. And then they have the nerve to ask the freaking piano tuners if they can fix the plumbing or reset the WiFi as long as they’re here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should come as no surprise that pianos serve as a recurring motif all throughout the picture. And in every single case (with one notable exception in the closing minutes), it’s the older pianos that always bring a much bigger impact. The pianos that are well-loved and fondly played, often handed down between generations. There’s one notable scene when Nicky gets a glint in his eye, offering a free repair job for a piano that “means something”. It’s a nice glimpse into the character’s passion, and his reason for doing this when he could be doing anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except that in Nicky’s mind, he can’t do anything else. Remember, this kid was practically born and raised to be a world-class pianist, and that was all taken away from him. Because of some freak genetic defect, the musical prodigy can’t play music. The best he can do is tune the instrument for someone else to make music out of. Which — again — makes it all the more bitter when he’s tuning a piano for oblivious idiots who use it for a glorified mantelpiece and not a means of artistic expression. (I might add that Nicky isn’t even all that great at crime either, since his hyper-acute hearing makes him uniquely easy to torture and he crumples at the mere sound of gunshots.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicky has his job and he has his surrogate family with Harry and Marla. That’s it. He has no social life, his only hobby is chain-smoking cigarettes, and he has no other educational or work history. With relationships as with music, he’s stuck in this tragically sad situation where he needs it and wants it, even though it’s physically, spiritually, literally painful for him to be around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings us to the love interest. Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) is an ambitious grad student trying to make a name for herself as a composer. The big problem I kept running into is that the Nicky\/Ruthie chemistry isn’t quite there. Sure, these are two nicely attractive performers and they’re clearly trying as hard as they can, but I could never quite believe the two as a romantic item.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as the film kept going, I slowly started realizing that wasn’t a bug — that was a feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, Nicky and Ruthie are both young and attractive musical geniuses, so they’ve got that in common. The big problem is that Ruthie’s got all her shit figured out while Nicky is a great big pile of trauma who just happens to be in over his head with violent criminals. Ruthie is putting all her time and energy toward graduating and getting a prestigious internship (with Jean Reno, of all people, making a brief appearance as her ideal mentor), while Nicky is resolutely convinced that he doesn’t have anything to live for beyond helping Harry with the piano tuning business. And lest we forget, Ruthie is out there slaving away at the amazing musical career that was taken away from Nicky for reasons beyond his control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I get why Nicky needs Ruthie. But why the hell does Ruthie need Nicky? Turns out the both of them were asking the same question all along. And again, there’s the tiny little detail that Nicky is raking in money by way of dangerous and highly illegal activity that Ruthie knows nothing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upshot is that the film leaves it an open question as to whether these two are a viable romantic option. It’s tough to say how or whether they’d be good for each other. Which is honestly much more interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for nitpicks, Hoffman’s involvement was so heavily promoted that I’m disappointed he didn’t get more screentime. Then again, he got stuck with the thankless role of “old guy who gets sick to motivate our main character”, and at least he brought some personality to that job. Conversely, I wish that Cohen and Sakira had been given less screentime. I get that we need some degree of comic relief here, but these characters overstayed their welcome in a big way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I’m sorry to report that this movie failed the “You fucking idiot!” test. Yes, I know our protagonist is bad at crime and he’s not cut out for dealing with stolen goods. But when Nicky’s safecracking hobby inevitably comes to light, it happens in a laughably contrived manner that traces directly back to Nicky doing a brazenly stupid thing with the loot. That whole subplot was so plot-motivated, so transparent, so needlessly idiotic that I literally had to say “You fucking idiot!” out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, I was nicely impressed with Tuner<\/em>. The premise brings a neat musical twist on the established crime thriller format, complete with insightful character drama, painstaking sound design, and blistering piano compositions. Even when the plot thins, the performers are all so earnest that they keep the story going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel confident in saying that this one will likely find its audience on home video. Which is a real shame, because the ingenious sound design and those superbly edited safecracking sequences demand a big-screen viewing. If there’s any way you can catch this one on the big screen, get it done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earnest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[237,3949,5165,4981,4659,5164,5166],"class_list":["post-13678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dustin-hoffman","tag-havana-rose-liu","tag-jean-reno","tag-leo-woodall","tag-lior-raz","tag-tovah-feldshuh","tag-tuner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3uOb3-tuner","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13678"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13682,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13678\/revisions\/13682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviecuriosities.fmuk.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}