Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Starring: Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman, Lior Raz, Tovah Feldshuh, Havana Rose Liu
Where to watch: Theatres
To watch or not to watch: A formulaic heist thriller with a sweet, charming cast

Niki White (Leo Woodall) is an apprentice to Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman) in a piano tuning company. It is implied that Harry and Niki’s father were friends before he passed away and Harry has adopted Niki as his son/nephew. Harry is a bit hard of hearing and Niki has a condition called hyperacusis which makes him particularly sensitive to sounds, making his dream of being a piano virtuoso not come to fruition. Harry takes ill due to his bad heart and is hospitalised, and Niki is alone tuning a piano at a rich man’s home at night when he hears loud noises from the upstairs. He goes to investigate and discovers a group of men, led by Uri (Lior Raz) trying to drill through a safe to steal. Niki’s inherent skill of perfect pitch comes in handy when he can crack open the safe just by listening. Niki unwittingly joins the band in their heists to gather cash to pay for Harry’s treatment. At the same time, he meets Ruthie, a piano student working towards her masterpiece to showcase a maestro. While life looks good for the moment for Niki, with the new relationship and the easy money, bar the hospitalisation of Harry, it comes crashing down quite soon, as these things eventually do in movies (not so much in real life).

There is little you cannot get from the trailer or the write-up in the previous paragraph about the story of the movie, it has been done a thousand times before and will continue to be recycled with little change over the foreseeable future, because it has a predictable structure and is easy to do. Maybe the movies of this genre will fall into this pattern despite attempts to avoid it, because there has to be a reason to fall into the life of crime for an innocent protagonist, the greed that comes from seeing easy money and the life lesson that comes from it (see Layer Cake for the same). But where this movie shines is not in the story, but in the characters. We have Dustin Hoffman, who is so damn charming as Harry, even though he has a short screen time. Then we have Tovah Feldshuh as Harry’s wife Marla, and she is as amazing and formidable as her Law & Order days. But the real star of the show is Leo Woodall who stole the entire show by his portrayal as Niki. The body language choices he made really told the story of the struggle Niki has been through and its impact on his, more than words did. It was all in the little things like the way his shoulder moves when he enters a client’s house, the way he would turn his head to hear or avoid noise – it really sold the story.

This is by no means a new storyline or something – Baby Driver has done this better with a similar storyline and had more style to it. And while Baby Driver had some interesting characters, it is the way Leo Woodall has acted that has really sealed the movie. Baby Driver had better dynamics between the male protagonist and his love interest – in Tuner, there is a clear potential of apparently unresolved issues arising due to class differences, which were touched upon and not further. This is not helped by the abrupt way the movie was ended. Leo Woodall has a great career ahead of him if this portrayal by him was a conscious acting decision by him and not something which is quintessentially him. Baby Driver is a much better movie, but this is also nice. Watch it with a date.