In Daniel Roher’s classy, gripping crime drama, a hearing-impaired piano tuner turns his acoustic sensitivity to his financial advantage…

by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Harry Horowitz is worried about the amount of mercury in his tuna. But there are worse things to fret about. Asked what he wants for lunch, he snaps, “I don’t want dementia!” Harry, played by an 88-year-old Dustin Hoffman, is not just losing his mind but he is going deaf. He’s locked his hearing aids in his safe and can’t remember the combination. He can’t remember why he put them there in the first place – or why he changed the combination. Harry is a piano tuner and, as his days would seem to be numbered, he has taken on an unlikely assistant, Niki White (Leo Woodall). It transpires that Niki has his own hearing problems as he’s suffering from hyperacusis, a condition that renders him partially deaf and hyper-sensitive to noise. However, it doesn’t impede his ability as a piano tuner – if anything, it focuses his sense of perfect pitch. It’s a talent that also aids his ability to interpret the subtle sonic sensations of a safe’s locking mechanism. He takes Harry’s safe home with him that night and after a bit of practice he retrieves Harry’s hearing aids.

Tuner, marking the fictional film debut of the Canadian documentarian Daniel Roher, whose Navalny won the Oscar three years ago, is a work of cinematic artistry. From the performances, sound design and melodic editing to the engagingly quirky characters, Tuner is so much more than just a crime thriller. It is spotted with small memorable moments that build to create an emotionally potent symphony of plot and character. Dustin Hoffman is wonderfully disarming as the New York tuner who, in spite of his age, is still full of vim and vinegar, like a glowing ember of the sparky Manhattan hustler Rico that Hoffman played in Midnight Cowboy (1969). If anything, Hoffman looks in better health now than he did in that Oscar-winning film 57 years ago.

But Tuner really belongs to Leo Woodall as Niki, an unassuming, quietly spoken and sensitive soul who has transformed his disability into an extraordinary talent (piano tuners can earn $4,000 a week). However, there’s even more money to be made as a safecracker, as Niki discovers when interrupting a break-in while trying to tune a piano in the home of a wealthy client. He really can’t focus with all that noise going on upstairs, so his light-fingered legerdemain quickly sorts out the problem for the strangers and he opens the safe for them.

While Tuner is essentially a crime drama with a love story thrown in, its generic elements never feel forced. The intruders may be on the wrong side of the law, but their Israeli ringmaster Uri (Lior Raz) spares us the swagger of a B-movie villain and seems keen to improve his English. And then there’s the piano student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) who, initially dismissive of Niki, comes to appreciate his talent when the ‘deaf’ man detects more than a touch of Mussorgsky in her self-penned composition.

There are hints of Sound of Metal and even Tár, as Niki attempts to navigate a stage that most people take for granted (“you’d be surprised how loud the world is,” he says), armed with ear defenders to protect him from the affrontery of car alarms, barking dogs, incessantly beeping phones and overhead planes. Niki, as Harry tells anyone prepared to listen, is also a highly eligible bachelor with a very special gift. Shuttered into a very private corner of his own seclusion, he is an uncommon prodigy in the world of jazz and classical music and Tuner should especially appeal to those conversant in those fields. There’s even a cameo from Herbie Hancock as himself to add a seal of authenticity, before a finale which knocks the socks off any other thriller you are likely to encounter this year.

Cast:‍ ‍Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, Dustin Hoffman, Lior Raz, Tovah Feldshuh, Jean Reno, Jean Yoon, Gil Cohen, Nissan Sakira, Herbie Hancock.

Dir Daniel Roher, Pro JoAnne Sellar, Lila Yacoub, Teddy Schwarzman and Michael Heimler, Screenplay Daniel Roher and Robert Ramsey, Ph Lowell A. Meyer, Pro Des Peter Cosco, Ed Greg O’Bryant, Music Will Bates and Marius De Vries, Costumes Sarah Millman, Sound Johnnie Burn and Maximilian Behrens, Dialect coach Elizabeth Himelstein.

English Breakfast Productions-Black Bear Pictures.
107 mins. USA/Canada. 2025. UK and US Rel: 29 May 2026. Cert. 15.

Tuner

Time and Water