Tuner

You can add Tuner to this great little sub-genre of music-adjacent thrillers which use sound as a core concept and propulsion.

Of a piece with Whiplash, Sound of Metal (and kind of Baby Driver but that’s a little more high-octane) this is another brilliantly crafted movie.

Our titular Piano Tuner Niki has a hearing condition that makes him highly susceptible to loud sounds but realises that this gives him the means to unlock safes.

Cue a tale where he gets caught up in a little bit of crime whilst also starting to fall for a student composer.

Ok, so yes it falls pray of nigh-on every narrative convention and cliché and pretty much follows a story and pattern you can predict from a mile away.

However, it’s well-paced, well-edited, sharp, funny, winningly charming in its romance plot and altogether just a very likable film.

Dustin Hoffman and Jean Reno sparkle in small roles but it is Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu who shine most as our leading pair.

Their chemistry is on point and, despite the aforementioned conventions, the ending is actually intriguingly ambiguous and doesn’t quite package everything up in a nice bow.

That ending is actually probably a tad divisive. There’s a jump between a couple of scenes where a few things are implied rather than shown and, whilst the final moments are cathartic, it perhaps could have been tightened up just a little bit.

The real star of the show and main attribute of the film though is the sound design which, like some of those films mentioned above, uses the tiniest and loudest sounds to great effect as volumes go up and down in the mix.

The clicks of the safes, an air horn, a gunshot, a fire alarm and multiple other uses of diegetic sound are all fantastic and thrilling moments.

A visually and sonically well-edited genre mixer and great entertainment.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️