Review: 'Tuner' hits some strong notes as a romance and character study, but its heist element is a sour chord

Director Daniel Roher’s first narrative feature, “Tuner,” is part heist flick, part character study and part romantic drama — and never comfortably meshes those disparate parts.

Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman) is a piano tuner in New York City, working in rich people’s houses and music schools, making Steinways and Yamahas sound better. Harry’s getting on in years, so he’s training an apprentice, Niki White (Leo Woodall), to take over the trade. 

Niki suffers from hyperacusis, a disorder he says makes him allergic to loud noises. He wears earplugs while he’s tuning pianos, so he can focus on the notes of the strings, and he wears headphones to block out the distractions of other noise.

One evening, when he’s working on a piano in a rich family’s home, Niki hears something distracting upstairs. He goes up and finds a crew trying to cut into a safe. Niki uses his sensitive hearing to crack the safe, so he can get on with his piano work. But the guy in charge of the crew, Uri (Lior Raz), recognizes talent when he sees it — so he offers Niki a lot of money to open more safes for what Uri calls his “security” firm.

Niki agrees, because of a sudden need for money — because Harry has fallen ill, and Harry and his wife, Marla (Tovah Feldshuh), owe some $36,000 in hospital bills. 

All this happens just as Niki has met Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a gifted pianist and composer, whose working on a composition that she hopes will land her an apprenticeship with a famous composer (Jean Reno). Niki and Ruthie begin a romance, which is the last thing a guy who’s palling around with crooks should be doing.

Roher, a documentarian who won an Oscar for “Navalny,” co-wrote the script with Robert Ramsey, a Hollywood veteran — but I’m not assigning blame for the story’s more ridiculous contrivances as it works to meld the classical music world with the criminal element. I was along for the ride, mostly, until a jaw-dropping coincidence toward the movie’s end made the movie’s plausibility snap like a twig.

Woodall, who made an impression as a young soldier in “Nuremberg,” is solid here as the accidental thief, and he and Liu (“Bottoms”) have an easygoing chemistry that makes the romantic subplot the most charming part of the movie. But there are too many elements of disbelief that one has to swallow to make “Tuner” palatable.

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‘Tuner’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 29, in theaters. Rated R for language throughout, some violence, drug use and brief nudity. Running time: 109 minutes.