Genre films are less about the originality of their elements than about the precision with which they’re assembled and executed, and Tuner puts them together with a virtuosity that mirrors that of its protagonist. A neo-noir starring Leo Woodall and the legendary Dustin Hoffman that doesn’t strike a single false note, Daniel Roher’s thriller (May 22, in theaters) is as good as crime cinema gets, and one of 2026’s biggest surprises—and undisputed highlights.
With a jazziness typical of its dexterous touch, Tuner introduces NYC piano tuner Niki White (Woodall) as he hops from job to job with his employer, mentor, and surrogate father Harry Horowitz (Hoffman), with the latter’s amusing jibber-jabber about tuna fish, dementia, and inflammation serving as the soundtrack to their day-to-day toil. Whereas Harry is a boisterous, outgoing bundle of old-school Jewish energy and charm, Niki is soft-spoken and withdrawn, plying his trade with an unfussy, meticulous focus that’s aided by the earplugs (and bigger headphones) he always wears.
Harry knew Niki’s dad and has taken him under his wing, and through their chitchat, Tuner dispenses snippets of their backstory, starting with the fact that Niki was once a musical prodigy and that he gave up the piano for his current, mundane vocation due to his debilitating, undefined medical “condition.” What is immediately apparent is that Harry adores Niki and that, though he’s far from demonstrative, the young man feels likewise about Harry and his wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh), who over dinner chides her spouse for eating hamburgers, using excessive salt on his meal, and not wearing his hearing aids. The last of these infractions is waved away by Harry, who believes that, when it comes to music, hearing notes isn’t as important as feeling them.
Hoffman’s performance as Harry is so overpoweringly effervescent that Tuner immediately wins one over, even as it sets its narrative gears in motion. Upon learning that Harry accidentally locked his hearing aids in his closet safe, Niki takes the same home and, with some help from online tutorial videos, teaches himself how to crack it. Thus, Niki discovers that his expert ears are good for more than merely fine-tuning the wealthy’s (often unused) Steinways and Yamahas. This winds up being fortuitous when, during one job, he stumbles upon security firm owner Uri (Fauda’s Lior Raz) and his two employees trying to drill their way into a customer’s safe—a chance encounter that, following Niki showing off his gift, earns him a new money-making opportunity.
With a placid countenance and far-off glance that only tightens when he’s intently listening for a combination lock to emit the proper click, Niki is a prototypical noir protagonist whose external reflects his internal and who’s compelled by circumstance to make perilous choices for his (and his loved ones’) benefit. At a conservatory, Niki meets aspiring concert pianist Ruthie (Havan Rose Liu), who’s simultaneously rankled and impressed by the tuner’s perfect pitch. During their second run-in at a diner, Harry tries, in matchmaker style, to push them together, after which he suffers a debilitating heart attack. If that weren’t distressing enough for Niki, he soon hears from Marla that they can’t cover their hospital costs, thereby motivating him to set aside any lingering qualms and join Uri’s robbery crew.
Navigating domestic and criminal Jewish worlds, and denied the artistic future he coveted, Niki is an outsider who turns to wrongdoing by forces out of his control. Still, the film doesn’t let him off the hook for his decisions. While he doesn’t appear burdened by stealing for profit, the tension between Niki’s collaboration with Uri and his budding relationship with Ruthie evolves at a steady, taut pace, with Roher and co-writer Robert Ramsey concurrently developing both sides of Niki’s life before, invariably, crashing the two into each other. Once that happens, Niki’s everything is put in jeopardy, including his health, which is already precarious due to his biological inability to cope with loud noises.
Best known for his Oscar-winning 2022 documentary Navalny, Roher proves himself a skillful dramatist with Tuner, pacing his material with a deft mix of earnestness and urgency, and peppering it with a host of colorful characters, including the gregarious Uri (who has a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing smile) and his two loyal cohorts Benny (Nissan Sakira) and Yoni (Gil Cohen), as well as Marius Maissner (Jean Reno), the illustrious classical musician whom Ruthie hopes will offer her an assistant position. Like the best crime films, Tuner is full of great, memorable faces, and its sole shortcoming is that Hoffman—doing his best work in years—doesn’t get nearly the screen time he deserves.
Aided by Greg O’Bryant’s expert editing, Roher’s snappy direction operates in harmony with Will Bates’ alternately jaunty, morose, and anguished score, rendering the proceedings a sophisticated clockwork mechanism not unlike the locks Niki becomes adept at besting. As befitting a tale such as this, Niki’s blossoming fortunes are derailed by unforeseen calamities that require him to take desperate measures, and as it hurtles toward its anxious finale, the film, and Woodall, maintain thrilling poise. For the lead actor, it’s a breakthrough performance; conveying much with few words, his best scenes are, ultimately, his quietest, when one can see the wheels in his mind turning.
Catastrophe looms large over Tuner, and in its climactic passages, the biggest question becomes whether Roher and company have it in them to embrace their genre ancestors’ fatalistic spirit. That answer won’t be revealed here, but what can be said is that the writer/director resolves his story’s intertwined concerns with aplomb, highlighted by a masterful closing scene that ends this saga with an ideal measure of ambiguity.
So assured and satisfying is Roher’s latest that it inadvertently highlights the rarity of this level of craftsmanship at the multiplex. His gem is too modest and self-contained to change that sad state of affairs. Nonetheless, its excellence provides hope that there are still talented artists capable of, and committed to, breathing fresh life into classical forms—and that, when done correctly, there are few things better than a thriller that knows how to conduct underworld action like a maestro.
