Tuner

Some films begin with a striking idea only to discover that the most interesting thing was somewhere else. This could simply have been built as a clever thriller about a young man with extraordinary hearing who finds a rather more dangerous use for it than tuning pianos. Yet what ultimately interested me about Tuner was something much more human: what happens when the thing that makes you special also shapes your entire life, what we do with our mistakes, and whether we can still find a second chance.
Leo Woodall makes Niki work precisely because he never feels like a conventional hero. He is reserved, vulnerable, obsessive and sometimes makes the wrong decisions, yet there is something about him that makes him very easy to follow. Dustin Hoffman brings warmth and a sense of experience that fits perfectly with that relationship between mentor and pupil, while Havana Rose Liu introduces an emotional dimension that eventually becomes essential. Daniel Roher, in his first fiction feature after Navalny, does not need to turn them into extraordinary characters for us to end up caring about them.
Sound is much more than a flashy device. The film tries to make us perceive Niki's world from the inside, turning tiny noises, vibrations and frequencies into part of the storytelling. This is where Johnnie Burn's sound design becomes essential. His auditory talent may initially seem almost like a superpower, but gradually we understand that it is also a burden. And that contradiction — the same gift that opens possibilities while also trapping him — gives the story considerably more depth than I expected to find in a thriller about a piano tuner who discovers another use for his ear.
The criminal plot is perhaps the least distinctive part. It works, maintains tension and gives the film the movement it needs, but I do not think that is where its real strength lies. Nor is it trying to reinvent the thriller, and some situations can be anticipated. What matters is everything around it: the relationship with music, guilt, affection, decisions that cannot be undone and the attempt to repair something before it is too late. That is where the film stops being merely pleasant and starts to matter to me.
And the final stretch is what ultimately won me over. Without needing to explain exactly what happens, there is a loss that affects the very centre of Niki's identity and could easily have turned the ending into pure melodrama. Instead, the film finds something much more beautiful: what we have deeply loved can remain inside us even when our ability to experience it changes. Music, memory and a composition that means much more than a sequence of notes ultimately come together in a way that made me cry. Not because the ending is manipulative, but because it understands perfectly what the character has truly lost and, above all, what part of it he can still preserve.
It is not a perfect film, nor does it need to be. Its criminal plot could have more force and some elements are fairly conventional, but it has something I value much more: heart. I ended up believing in its characters, hoping they would find a way out and genuinely feeling what happened to them. It is elegant without showing off, sad without indulging in sadness and emotional without forcing me to feel. In the end, what remains is not the safecracking trick, but a much simpler and more beautiful idea: many things can be taken away from us, but some of those that truly shaped us find a way to keep sounding inside.