Tuner: Sadly off-key

Tuner (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five); rated R, for violence, dramatic intensity and considerable profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.20.26

Of all the ways a film can fail, the most disappointing is when script, execution and tone show great promise during the first two acts...

 

...and then everything goes to hell during the third act, leaving viewers unsatisfied, and with an expression of bewildered “what the heck?” 

 

Upon arrival at each client's home, Harry (Dustin Hoffman) does all the talking and
glad-handing, while the genial and mostly silent Niki (Leo Woodall) focuses on
tuning an often unloved piano.

That’s sadly the case with this film, Academy Award-winning documentarian Daniel Roher’s first dramatic feature. The beguiling premise in Roher and Robert Ransey’s script is clever and fascinating; the primary characters are deftly sculpted and credibly portrayed by all cast members; and when blended with the initially relaxed atmosphere — shaded with just a dollop of danger — the result is an entertaining viewing experience.

Until the final half hour, anyway.

 

Niki White (Leo Woodall) and long-time New York City piano tuner Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman) are introduced during an amusing montage of their various assignments, mostly for wealthy clients. Harry, once a close friend of Niki’s late father, has become absent-minded, and is losing his hearing. 

 

Niki’s initial position as apprentice has blossomed into something much closer to a family bond; Harry’s wife, Marla (Tovah Feldshuh, marvelous as always) dotes on the young man, as does Harry.

 

At work, Harry and Niki are an amusing Mutt ’n’ Jeff pair, with the former’s easygoing manner and motor-mouthed, often off-topic chatter wholly at odds with the younger man’s cheerful patience, frequently rolled eyes, and focused, measured responses. Harry always dresses “nicely,” although his clothes appear several styles out of date; Niki favors dark jumpsuits. We get the impression that his wardrobe — and lifestyle — are simple and minimal.

 

Harry is a longtime jazz aficionado, and frequently regales Niki with back-in-the-day encounters with cats such as Herbie Hancock, who gave Harry the amusing nickname — “Tuner Fish” — by which he’s often greeted. Niki takes such stories with a dubious grain of salt.

 

Further in that vein, Will Bates’ jazz-inflected original score often is interrupted by snatches of familiar tunes by Dave Brubeck, Hancock, Oscar Peterson, Nina Simone and several others.

 

Hoffman is a hoot in this role, his manner repeatedly shifting between impish, impatient and nostalgic, and back again. He effortlessly steals focus, although Woodall possesses plenty of his own quiet charm (amply displayed in his role as the hunky park ranger, in last year’s Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy).

Operation Finale: A taut, fact-based espionage drama

Operation Finale (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence, highly disturbing content and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang

The scariest monsters are the ones who look and act completely normal.

Say, like the kindly retired gentleman who lives next door, and often can be found in his garage, putting the finishing touches on a wood-working project. When it turns out that he’s a serial killer living under an alias, wanted in seven other states for the murders of at least 15 people, his neighbors shake their heads and — if interviewed for the local news — say “We had no idea.”

Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac, left) believes that he can manipulate Adolf Eichmann
(Ben Kingsley) into cooperating with the Mossad abduction team ... but they're likely
underestimating their captive's guile.

And then lie awake at night, eyes wide open, shivering over the possibility that he might have come in their window.

Ben Kingsley plays just such an individual in Operation Finale, and his performance is just as chilling — just as rationally, seductively evil — as Anthony Hopkins’ Dr. Hannibal Lecter, in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.

The difference — which makes Kingsley’s performance even more frightening — is that he plays an actual historical figure: Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust.

Operation Finale is director Chris Weitz’s thoroughly absorbing depiction of the clandestine 1960 Mossad mission that tracked Eichmann to an industrial community in Buenos Aires, where he had been living under the alias “Ricardo Klement” since 1950. Because Argentina had a well-established history of refusing extradition requests for Nazi war criminals — which had enabled a sizable community of expat Nazis to continue espousing their genocidal Aryan philosophies — the decision was made to kidnap Eichmann, in order to bring him to trial in Israel.

Scripter Matthew Orton’s narrative focuses on Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), one of the eight operatives sent to snatch Eichmann, under the supervision of Mossad director Isser Harel (Lior Raz). Thanks to the Mossad’s 2012 decision to finally reveal details of the operation — and with access to Malkin’s 1990 memoir, Eichmann in My Hands — Orton’s script is able to depict details accurately, while also identifying many of the actual Israeli participants.

The result is a riveting espionage drama with the immediacy of a documentary, and the edge-of-the-seat suspense of a Hollywood thriller.

Isaac’s Peter, in his early 30s and already a veteran Mossad agent, is an outwardly affable individual who’s quick with a wry quip. But the ready smile on Peter’s face does not rise to his eyes, which often are dark with grief. He suffers frequent nightmares — we view them as flashbacks, each revealing a bit more than its predecessor — of precisely how his beloved sister Fruma and her three children perished during the Holocaust. Not knowing is almost worse than the loss itself.

He therefore protests, at least initially, when he’s asked to join the Argentinean assignment by good friend and fellow Mossad agent Rafi Eitan (Nick Kroll). Peter would rather execute the man and be done with it; Harel and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Simon Russell Beale) insist that putting Eichmann through a very public trial would be far, far better.

Peter therefore spends most of the film in a deeply troubled state, Isaac deftly conveying the turmoil that digs at the man’s soul. It’s a persuasive performance, given the degree to which Isaac is able to put us into Peter’s head, and allow us to understand his motivations. And fears.