Tuner looks like it’s going to be a cracking drama but it hits a bum note early on, ironic in a film about a guy whose job it is to make pianos ring true. Dustin Hoffman is prominently billed, seems to be prominent dramatically too, but has been all but retired from the movie after about 15 minutes. What was shaping up to be enjoyable display of give-and-take, catch-and-release, tag-team acting between Hoffman and co-star Leo Woodall becomes something else.
Hoffman plays the old master teaching his skills to Woodall’s callow youth, Niki, a kid with gifts – perfect pitch and hearing so acute he wears headphones to protect his ears. Niki’s true calling is playing concert piano but instead of following his dream he has bottled it and now trails around New York with Harry, tuning Bechsteins and Steinways for the moneyed and honeyed.
Harry and Niki are very good at what they do. Though they are treated as mere tradesmen by the people who get them in, Niki and Harry have their bond. In early scenes before Hoffman is hurried off the screen, it looks like this is what the film is going to be about, aristocrats of culture gliding about in a world that barely values them.
Instead, Harry winds up in hospital out of action, and Niki is propelled into a different film entirely, one in which he starts using his acute hearing to help crooks crack open safes – his hearing is so good he can hear the tumblers falling into place. (Do safes really still rely on tumblers in the 21st century, I wondered? I asked AI – it said yes, so that’s that answered.)
At the same time as this caper plot is taking shape, a romantic one is warming up. Niki impresses a pianist called Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu, suddenly everywhere) first by tuning her piano and then naming every note she plays on it, including the ones hidden inside fiendish chord combinations. As meet-cutes go, this is a new one on me, and it’s good.
From here, it’s a romantic scene followed by a caper scene, with occasional stop-offs at the hospital, where Harry’s wife, Maria (Tovah Feldshuh), wonders where the money is coming from to pay the medical bills and sanctifies the Niki/Ruthie relationship with “I like that girl” speeches.
On account of his gift, Niki is a superhero of sorts and the headphones are his costume, though this is in many respects a down-to-earth story about Gen Z struggling to get a break, especially once boomer support – Harry has been Niki’s bank of mum and dad – is withdrawn.
It’s as if there are two different films playing out at the same time here. One quite serious – Harry in hospital, Niki busting a gut to cover his bills. The other quite frivolous – caperish safe jobs with the reluctant Niki and oafish crooks: talkative Uri (Lior Raz), smart Yoni (Gil Cohen) and dumb Benny (Nissan Sakira).
Holding it together to an extent is a lot of a jazz piano on the soundtrack – the likes of Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, Nina Simone and Herbie Hancock. Hancock himself puts in a cameo at one point to add in details about Harry’s background, details that must belong to an older version of the film, one in which Dustin Hoffman had a proper role.
This is an enjoyable film that feels like it’s been script-doctored about once too often or once not enough. Each element – Harry, the safe jobs, the romance – are all enjoyable in themselves but they don’t really cohere. Great though Havana Rose Liu is as an actor – different in everything she’s in – Ruthie could probably be removed entirely and the film would be better for it. And there’s a cameo towards the end by Jean Reno that is truly head-scratching it’s so brief. Tone deaf, you might say.
Tuner – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
