Tuner

Havana Rose Liu and Leo Woodall

Daniel Rohrer's Tuner is a promising first fictional feature. It attempts to affix a crime subplot to a romantic comedy with mixed results. Leo Woodall stars as Niki, a piano tuner apprenticing for an aged mentor named Harry Horowitz, played by an indulged Dustin Hoffman. The duo putter around the tri-state area in a bespoke van servicing the underused pianos of the rich and indolent. Niki is afflicted with an "audio allergy" which enable him to hear pitch perfectly, but also makes him painfully sensitive to ambient noise. He meets cute with a budding composer named Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) and after initial misgivings they are canoodling in a musical montage set to Dean Martin's version of Almost Like Being in Love. The film's action is mostly set to jazz standards from 1950s by such luminaries as Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and Charles Mingus. Complications arise when tragedy strikes and Niki is forced to earn major scratch by applying his specialized skills to safecracking for a motley crew of Russian gangsters.

It is here that the flick goes off the rails a bit. The portrayal of the Russians is cartoonish (surprising for the director of Navalny) so that when they bare their fangs, the results are not believable. However, this is primarily a genre exercise, so implausibilities abound; as many as in, say, Golden Boy. The film is able to coast along on the charm of the performers. Ms. Liu makes her character enough of a control freak to be believable and Woodall plays interestingly against the heroic mien of a character with a disability. Best in show is Tovah Feldshuh as Harry's no nonsense spouse. Jean Reno is somewhat miscast as a maestro, but it is always a pleasure to see him. Rohrer directs with a pleasing attention to dramatic convention, tempo, and characterization, but, hopefully, his next script will be less derivative.