Cinemacaw: Taking flight through film.

Leo Woodall is in tune in this thriller.

I first came across director Daniel Roher through his BAFTA winning documentary Navalny: a thought provoking yet oddly amusing feature which centres around the attempted assassination of Russian opposition Alexei Navalny. For my sins, back in 2022 I knew very little about Alexei Navalny and was left reeling after watching the documentary: equal parts shocked and furious with the state of the world. But ultimately it was Roher’s skill as a director which elicited such an emotional response. Roher included moments of joy (the lipsyncs with his daughter), introspection (the discussions about apples with his wife), and moments of quiet (sitting for the journey – a now staple activity in my own household). It was this joy, introspection and quiet which invited such a connection with the now deceased Russian opposition leader and subsequently elicited such pathos with the audience. And Roher’s done it again but this time with a fictional piano tuner in New York.

Niki, as played by the ever charming Leo Woodall ahead of his foray into Middle Earth, is a piano tuner with hyperacusis, a debilitating hearing disorder leading to the constant use of ear plugs and ear defenders. He works for Harry, played by the even more charming Dustin Hoffman, who is his mentor and friend in equal measure. When the aging Harry can’t remember the combination to a safe, Niki learns his acute sense of hearing can provide him with a ‘very particular set of skills’.

The film is grounded in this relationship, and it is kudos to both Woodall and Hoffman whose easygoing friendship is not only utterly believable but a delight to witness. A silly grin plastered my face for the opening minutes where we joined them for a day at work, tuning pianos, eating burgers and exchanging stories and jokes in the van. The other important relationship in this is between Woodall’s Niki, and Havana Rose Liu’s Ruth, a final year student of composition. I loved how her character was often hesitant or frustrated or unsure – it was a delight to see a supporting role feel three dimensional in this genre. Liu’s subtlety and microexpressions hinting at a character who has her own life away from the narrative.

In clumsier hands, Tuner could be a run of the mill action thriller. It certainly has the ingredients of one: the isolated young man with an extraordinary gift, the romantic subplot, the alarmingly large medical bills leading to a life in crime (a trope now so common as a motive in the media it’s astounding to me that it is in actuality a reality for plenty of US citizens). Yet despite the formulaic ingredients, Roher puts them together with the same moments of joy, introspection and quiet that can be seen in his previous documentaries.

The main limitation this movie has is that it has been made simply 20 years too late. Have audiences become numb to action thrillers? Are audiences spoiled by movies with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars? Has streaming caused an influx of action movies so absurd they might as well be comedies? (Sorry Jason Statham – I’m looking at you.) Tuner is a movie that, should it have come out in 2006, would have had a larger box office performance than it does today. Of course this probably says more about the state of cinema than the film itself. It’s well written, it’s well acted, it’s well made. It’s just not 2026 level event cinema.

As the protagonist Niki says “you’ve got to be comfortable with imperfection”. Tuner, like a piano, is a film tuned perfectly to itself; just imperfectly to 2026.

Subjective 4/5

Objective 3/5

Review by Tesni Jones – 17/06/26