Florida's Film, Television and the Arts Magazine
Tuner - Florida Film Festival Movie Review
You’ll be invested in Tuner from the opening bars. It’s a heist film but it plays like a jazz arrangement for piano, with the right hand ‘good guys’ and the left hand ‘bad guys’ competing for attention. And it’s driven by Leo Woodall.
Leo’s character, Niki White, is the assistant to master piano tuner Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), who's been serving the NY metropolitan area for decades. To the dismay of his wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh), Harry hasn’t raised his prices in years. When Harry suffers a severe medical incident, there’s no money to pay the bills.
You’d think acting opposite Hoffman might be daunting, but Woodall immediately finds his footing. Niki knows his majors and minors and can tune a piano by ear. Once a musical prodigy who created his own beautiful, dynamic arrangements, Niki was felled by a permanent and debilitating auditory illness. Loud noises are now physically excruciating to Niki, who must wear a sound muffling headset at almost all times.
On a tuning job, he meets a beautiful, driven, music student, Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), and with a little shove from Harry, the two become one. Niki’s character easily slips between the beautiful world of concert halls and the gritty criminal element run by Uri (Lior Raz). Uri is a ‘security consultant’, and a slick one, using his contacts to safe crack, stealing from the uber-rich. He and Niki cross paths when they’re in the same gorgeous mansion, when Uri convinces Niki to open a safe, claiming the owner asked him to. Experiencing Niki’s unbelievable and financially usefull skill set, Uri tries to bribe him with a place on his team. Niki declines, but once Harry is ill, he sees no other option but to try to help his beloved father-figure by helping crack open the safes.
Niki, Harry and Ruthie are all creatives. But what happens when that creativity is suddenly taken away from them? What do you do when your passion, and your livelihood, is threatened? What moral sacrifices are you willing to live with?
The movie is driven by sound. The sound of a key striking the hammer on a piano. The pulsing beat of a dance club. The click-click-click of the dial on a safe. Even some of the dialogue is purposely muffled. All meant to bring you into Niki’s world. Explains Writer-Director David Roher, “I designed this movie for the sound. I want the sound design to put us into the subjective POV of Niki White. I want to hear what he hears.”
I enjoyed the sound of Tuner as much as I enjoyed the quick, clean, visual cuts. The camera placement is impeccable. Roher’s film veers from melodic to staccato, and he succeeds in orchestrating this talented ensemble. Tuner is pitch perfect.
