‘Tuner’ Evaluation: Slick, Participating Caper Boosted by Dustin Hoffman and a Wildly Charismatic Leo Woodall

Few administrators of documentaries have ever made such a placing transition to dramatic movies as Daniel Roher, the director of Tuner. An Oscar winner just some years in the past for Navalny, Roher has now crafted a fascinating mixture of character research and suspense caper. Effectively acquired in Telluride and Toronto final yr, the film ought to discover an appreciative viewers in theaters and past. As well as, it’s positive to push main man Leo Woodall into the uncommon coterie of charismatic heartthrobs who additionally occur to be superlative actors.

Woodall performs Niki, a piano tuner who has labored as an apprentice to a veteran within the area, warmly portrayed by Dustin Hoffman. Niki has a listening to drawback (primarily a sensitivity to loud noises) that jettisoned his personal profession as a pianist, however this illness has made him adept at listening to the slightest defect in piano keys. Though Hoffman’s Harry has the contacts, Niki has the present that makes him invaluable.

When Niki runs right into a band of minor crooks, it seems that his listening to points have lent him one other present as a safecracker. Whether or not there’s actually a correlation between these two occupations could also be left for specialists to determine, however the script by Roher and Robert Ramsey convinces us that Niki is a broken man with many hidden skills.

Throughout the course of his work, he additionally encounters a gifted younger composer and pianist, Ruthie, performed by Havana Rose Liu, and Harry encourages their romance. When Harry is hospitalized with a severe sickness, Harry’s spouse (beautifully performed by Tovah Feldshuh) pronounces that Harry’s lack of enterprise acumen has left him with no funds to pay his medical payments. So Niki decides to contact the prison safecrackers to make the cash that Harry desperately wants.

There’s a contact of sentimentality within the portrayal of Niki as a beneficiant soul with none need of his personal for a serious payday. However Woodall is so effortlessly charismatic and delicate that we settle for his inherent decency with out main questions. The British-born Woodall has acted on a number of tv sequence (together with the second season of The White Lotus) and had memorable supporting components within the newest Bridget Jones installment, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and in Nuremberg (he had among the finest scenes within the film, when he reveals his Jewish historical past to the psychiatrist performed by Rami Malek).

However that is the primary time he has needed to carry a complete film, and he proves greater than equal to the duty. The scenes by which Niki reveals his hypersensitivity to loud noises — as when Ruthie inadvertently forgets to show off an oven that screeches fiercely — are terribly efficient. Kudos to the sound designer, Johnnie Burn, for his essential contribution. The rating by Will Bates additionally helps to propel the motion.

Maybe the plot will get a bit overly convoluted, with a few rival gangs of crooks threatening Niki, and a late however vibrant look by Jean Reno as a classical music maestro in quest of a lacking watch misplaced throughout the Holocaust. One other memorable cameo look comes from Herbie Hancock (enjoying himself) as one of many individuals who benefited from Harry’s tuning experience up to now.

Roher’s directorial ability reveals in his taking advantage of even temporary however telling scenes with all these actors. Feldshuh is very vibrant in convincing us of her character’s shrewdness in addition to her solicitousness for each Harry and Niki. Aided by Greg O’Bryant’s modifying, the movie races towards its satisfying conclusion, although one may criticize Roher for a bent towards slickness that often undercuts the intense underpinnings of the story.

However there aren’t any flaws in Woodall’s efficiency. If this film doesn’t catapult him to starring ranks, then there are few remaining certainties in right now’s cinematic panorama.