Tuner centres around piano tuners Niki (Leo Woodall – Nuremberg) and Harry (Dustin Hoffman – The Graduate 4K Limited Edition Boxset), the former having perfect pitch, due to suffering from hyperacusis, which means he’s allergic to loud noises.
Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu – Lurker) comes into Leo’s life as she’s practicing for a recital while he’s required to tune the piano in her building, leading a romance to blossom – and for him to conveniently have to fix her own personal piano, following an apartment leak. Hmm… if that was happening, surely you’d move the piano before it became such a big problem!
It does feel like the trailer, which was shown multiple times before I saw this – and even then, it’s not out until May 29th – shows too much of the film. Hence, we get almost all of the early scene where they’re fixing a piano, and a rich, female customer says she’ll pay them $100 if they’ll fix the toilet, to which Harry comes back with, “Make it $500, and we’ll talk(!)”
The film also heavily relies on predictable, signposted storytelling, such as with the aged Harry being banned from salt by his wife Maria (Tovah Feldshuh – Shelter (Harlan Coben)), due to a heart attack which happened some time before the film began, leading to him taking a back seat in the proceedings. Still, it’s good to see the original ‘Hoff’ on the big screen again.
And since we already know that Niki will get involved with safe-cracking thieves, for the one person who DIDN’T see the trailer, there’s a brief scene where Harry’s locked his hearing aids in a small home safe and then forgot the code, but thanks to the lead protagonist’s condition, he’s able to ‘hear’ when the mechanism unlocks as he twiddles the knob.
Later, at one job, Niki struggles to concentrate on tuning that piano because the blokes installing new security equipment are making a hell of a racket. As he goes to ask them how long they’ll be, he sees they’re cracking open the owner’s safe, and told, “As soon as they can get the safe open, he can get back to tuning his piano”… Hence, the obvious comes as he helps them open it, in order for him to get a stack of cash and then continue with his legitimate job… as opposed to just leaving the premises, abandoning the job and reporting it to the police.
I did also wonder how come owners of items worth putting in a safe don’t notice when they hire the same CCTV guys that are doing the rounds in town, and stuff goes missing. I’d bloody notice! Still, with plot holes bigger than the average UK road pothole, this is explained away by their leader, Uri (Lior Raz – Gladiator II), telling how they only take a few items, which then doesn’t seem worth the effort of opening safes in the first place. Oh, and the fact that they’re shown DRILLING INTO THE FIRST ONE, as if the owner won’t spot that?! Pull the other one, it’s got bells on… but don’t ring them near Niki!
Another stupid moment: at one point, Niki’s trying to buy Harry’s van from him, which is on a repayment plan – so him and his wife can have their financial strains eased while he’s feeling a bit ‘Pat & Mick’, but what sort of van costs nearly $40,000?! That made no sense. If Harry owed that much on a vehicle, you’d just let the payment plan default, let the company take the van back, and Niki could buy his own for a few grand. Still, that wouldn’t help the plot…
Overall, I did enjoy Tuner to a point, because it flows reasonably well at times, along with some great audio editing when we ‘hear’ as Niki hears, and I’ve not seen that hearing condition used in films before – or even heard the term ‘Hyperacusis’. Plus, there’s great occasional tunes such as a brief bit of Dave Brubeck’s Unsquare Dance, as Niki checks out Harry’s safe. Still, while the film does go on too long and a lot of scenes could’ve been trimmed and lost nothing, this safe scene could’ve been left to continue a bit longer, so we got the whole of Brubeck’s masterpiece. After all, it’s literally only two minutes long, and has a great ending, which would’ve made a great moment to open the safe at that point… but no, writer/director Daniel Roher decides to fade it out early.
And one last plus: There’s a scene with Masuka from Dexter, aka CS Lee. He still hasn’t aged a day.
However, the glaringly-obvious plot holes do serve to irritate, and leave you with less to feel engaged about. Uri and his co-workers are cardboard cutout, ‘Maestro’ Jeno Reno‘s ‘Raison d’être’ stretched the bounds of credibility (it’s been a long time since the heady days of The Big Blue, and even when the audio was normal, there’s a fair bit of the usual ‘mumbling dialogue’ – such as when Niki tells Ruthie something like “Thankyou for being blocked”?
Oh, and screen 12 still overscans at the Trafford Centre – as it has for years, so the whole image falls off the edges of the screen by about 0.15:1. I’ve brought it up countless times, they keep claiming they’ve looked into it and everything is fine, but it isn’t. The subtitles were right on the bottom of the screen, and the numbers on a piece of CCTV footage were cut off the top of the screen, when we then see the same image on a monitor that shows it accurately. Bloody hopeless.
NOTE: There are no mid- nor post-credits scenes, as such, but there’s one thing right at the end of the credits…
Tuner is in cinemas from May 29th, and isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 109 minutes
Release date: May 29th 2026
Studio: Black Bear
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Rating: 6.5/10
Director: Daniel Roher
Producers: Michael Heimler, Teddy Schwarzman, JoAnne Sellar, Lila Yacoub
Screenplay: Daniel Roher, Robert Ramsey
Music: Will Bates, Marius De Vries
Cast:
Niki: Leo Woodall
Harry Horowitz: Dustin Hoffman
Ruthie: Havana Rose Liu
Uri: Lior Raz
Maria: Tovah Feldshuh
Benny: Nissan Sakira
Yoni: Gil Cohen
Maissner: Jean Reno
Yong: CS Lee
Ari: Ari Cohen Mann
Maissner Assistant: Dorren Lee
Jinwoo: Rek Lee
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.