Movie Review: 'Tuner'

Leo Woodall as a 'Good Will Hunting' of the piano tuning world? Why not.

(Dustin Hoffman and Leo Woodall in Tuner. Black Bear)

Leo Woodall is more than watchable in anything, from his role as a “nephew” with a talent for specialized services in The White Lotus to a queer mathematics genius in the Dan Brown-lite Apple TV+ series Prime Target. The material may vary, but Woodall is never less than charismatically compelling.

That said, even the talented English actor is hard pressed to save Daniel Roher’s Tuner from utter disintegration. The film follows an apprentice piano tuner named Niki (Woodall) as he fumbles his way through a series of improbable events that overlap and interlock in ways that make sense only in formulaic movies. No sooner has Niki lent his hyper-sensitive ears to the task of unlocking the safe to which his sweet older boss Harry (Dustin Hoffman) has lost the combination than he finds himself swallowing a dubious excuse offered by a gang of Russian “security experts” for why they need to break into a rich guy’s safe. All Niki want is for them to quit banging on the thing so he can focus on tuning the piano downstairs, so he puts his newfound talent to use — and is promptly recruited into the gang’s schemes to pilfer from the safes of the various upper-crust clientele for whom they supposedly provide security services. It’s a potentially lucrative, if obviously illegal, career shift, and Niki, who is too decent a guy to truck in such trade, would certainly turn it down, except wouldn’t you know it: Just then the elderly Harry has a health crisis and needs money. Lots of it. Harry’s status as surrogate father ensures that Niki will jump into his new life of crime with zeal, or, at least, an energetic montage.

These too-neat dovetailings work for Tuner’s near-comedic aspects, but this is not really meant to be a funny movie; they would work, too, as a rom-com built around some innovative ideas, and for a time it seems that’s where the film is headed. Niki meets a gorgeous conservatory student, Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), who is under enormous pressure as she works to complete a daring new composition. It would be a winning formula: Handsome single piano tuner with perfect pitch meets beautiful, driven pianist whose piano gets drenched, necessitating a house call. It’s love at first E-flat minor over diminished C-natural! But this isn’t really a rom-com, either, despite Niki’s cross-town dash to try to get to Ruthie’s big recital after he’s detained by some shady dealings.

In truth, while Niki might have perfect pitch, the film can’t seem to hit the right note, let alone find a coherent melody. It’s got a little Safdie brothers anxiety (which is goosed along by Will Bates’ score, by turns itchily jazzy and neoclassically rarefied), a full allotment of standard Hollywood tropes (tough-guy crooks with incompetent henchmen; oddball coincidences; just enough brutality, including sessions of torture involving an air horn, that it feels like real stakes are involved), and a measure of heart. Niki and Harry have a genuinely sweet dynamic, which is richly illustrated with brief scenes illustrating an affectionate working relationship between the surrogate father and the emotionally wounded young man (the mystery of what happened with Niki’s dad slowly unfolds amidst the plot’s relentlessly proceeding chaos). It’s a loaded toolbox of a movie, but it doesn’t come with assembly instructions; just a handful of genre cues and a too-small role for Tovah Feldshuh as Harry’s wife. Woodall, of course, remains watchable, even if you don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to be watching.

“Tuner” plays in theaters starting May 29.