Movie Review: Tuner

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A+

Documentary filmmaker Daniel Roher's first fictional film is a wonderful thriller. 

In this movie, a piano tuner (Leo Woodall) with a hearing condition that makes him hear noises extra loud, discovers that this condition gives him a gift for opening safes. When a group of safe robbers discover his ability, they offer him a chance to make more money opening safes for them. At first, he isn't interested. However, when he needs the money to help his hospitalized friend (Dustin Hoffman), he feels he has no choice but to help them. 

This is a masterfully made thriller. The story starts off as a slice of life tale about piano tuners. Yet even these early scenes are very engaging due to strong characterizations, smart dialogue and some funny humor. The story slowly becomes more dramatic and tense. This build up makes it so that each suspense scene builds upon the last and becomes incredibly tense towards the end. It also makes it so that when each suspense scene comes, we are fully engrossed in the story making the tension all the more effective. 

One element that very much surprised me here was how strong the romance was. Often times the romantic scenes feel shoehorned into a movie like this. Luckily that is not the case here. The romance is actually kind of sweet and leads to some of the film's most emotionally effective scenes. 

This is not only a well-written film, but the technical filmmaking is also fantastic. For a movie that revolves around sound, the filmmakers know exactly how to use this for their advantage. There are many times that we are allowed to hear things the same way our main character does with certain sounds muffled or amplified at the right times. This puts us in the main character's shoes and has us experiencing everything with him. This use of sound is also perfectly to help create the suspense. One scene involves our main character opening a safe in a very noisy environment. Without this use of amplified and muffled sounds, this very tense scene would lose what makes it so effective. The movie also has one of the greatest uses of crosscutting I have seen in a current movie in quite a while. One scene cuts back and forth between a character playing piano and a tense situation for our main character. The timing of when these cuts as well as the emotional connection between what is happening in both places makes this a perfect example of suspense filmmaking. It also helps that the piano music we are hearing perfectly matches the emotions we should be feeling as an audience. 

While I won't give away the ending here, I will say it is perfect. It may not wrap up everything neatly, but it ends the film on its most emotionally powerful moment. This leaves you feeling the full weight of the movie's impact right when the end credits start to roll. Afterall the main goal of any work of cinema (from popcorn movies to arthouse cinema) is emotion and this is the main takeaway anyone should have from a movie.

A must watch.