TUNER

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Alex

Niki White (Leo Woodall) works as an assistant piano tuner for Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman) who has his own small piano tuning business. Harry and his wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh) are like surrogate parents to Niki, since they were friends with his father before he died. Niki suffers from a condition called hyperacusis, where he has an extreme sensitivity to sound, always wearing protective devices in his ears to keep most of the sound out, and even wearing large headphones over those when he’s in louder spaces. Harry is jovial but ailing; he is having difficulty hearing and occasionally some dementia, forgetting things, and Niki helps him however he can. They spend their days traveling to homes of very wealthy people to tune up their expensive pianos.

Niki has dinner with Harry and Marla, where Marla admonishes him for not wearing his very expensive hearing aids, reminding him they will have to pay out of pocket for a new set if he loses them. He explains that he accidentally switched two items – he put his hearing aids in the safe and his watch in the bathroom. On top of that, he changed the safe combination and can’t remember it. Niki offers to take the safe home to try to open it – he uses his extremely sensitive hearing and after taking his time is able to listen closely and crack open the safe, retrieving Harry’s hearing aids.

With Harry’s health declining, Niki begins going to tune pianos on his own to pick up some of the slack. He goes to a prestigious music conservatory, where he meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a piano student working on her final composition. She is wary of him at first, but is very impressed by the fact that Niki has perfect pitch and can even name exactly what notes she is playing on the piano as she tests him. He explains that he used to play but with his condition doesn’t play anymore.

His next tuning job is at an extremely large mansion, where he is unable to properly tune the piano due to the noise of construction. He returns in the evening to finish tuning, only to hear loud noises upstairs. He goes to see what is making the noise, and discovers Uri (Lior Raz) and his two associates, Yoni and Uri’s nephew Benny, attempting to drill into the safe. He assumes they are robbing it, but Uri explains that he runs home security and this is part of his job. Knowing that they won’t stop making noise until the safe is open and wanting to finish his job and go home, Niki opens it for them, impressing Uri, who gives him a large stack of money and his phone number.

Harry and Niki are having lunch at a diner when they run into Ruthie, and Harry demands that Niki walk her to class, which he does, a little awkwardly. When he returns to the diner, he sees Harry being loaded into an ambulance. He meets Marla at the hospital, where Marla reveals that she has discovered Harry had stopped paying his insurance premiums without telling her, and they now will owe more money than they can afford to the hospital. The first thing she decides to do is sell the business’s van – and Niki insists he will buy it. Marla doesn’t think he can afford it, but Niki is determined to figure it out. When Uri calls him for help with a job, Niki says yes knowing he needs the money.

Niki goes to Uri’s headquarters, a warehouse that they use as a club space on the weekends. Uri explains that though he does run a security company, his clients are so wealthy that they don’t notice if a small amount goes missing from the top, so they steals a few valuable items per client. Uri asks Niki to prove himself again on one of his own safes; Niki demands extreme quiet and is able to open the safe. He agrees to start working on jobs for Uri, provided Uri gives him a large cash advance – which he does. Niki takes the cash and uses it to buy the van from Marla, who is surprised he was able to get the money.

The next day he gets a call from Ruthie, who is upset because a pipe burst and got water all over her piano which belonged to her grandmother. Niki comes over and begins fixing the piano – Ruthie is deeply upset because her grandmother only gave her two things – an expensive watch that she lost on the train, and the piano. Niki refuses to accept any payment, so Ruthie makes them pasta for dinner. Ruthie opens up about how she is very nervous about her composition because she hopes to be selected by prestigious composer Marius Maissner (Jean Reno) as his next apprentice. Niki tells Ruthie how he used to play piano until his illness make it too painful for him to continue.

Uri continues to call on Niki, and he joins Uri’s crew as they break into their wealthy clients’ homes where Uri has Niki unlock the safes. Niki is hesitant, but Uri insists these wealthy people make their money in unscrupulous ways. Niki is able to use his next large payout to pay off a huge portion of Harry’s hospital bill. He returns to Ruthie’s apartment to check on her piano, and the two almost share a kiss when Niki smells something burning. As Ruthie realizes she’s left food in the oven, the smoke alarm goes off, and the extreme volume causes Niki deep deep pain. Ruthie apologizes, very upset, and the two finally kiss. Over the next few weeks, Niki and Ruthie continue dating and he fixes pianos by day and cracks safes for Uri by night. He is able to pay off the full balance on Harry’s medical bill.

One of the safes Uri has him open contains a beautiful pearl watch that reminds Niki of the one that belonged to Ruthie’s grandmother, and the next time he sees her, he gives it to her as a gift. She is initially taken aback because it’s such an extravagant gift and they’ve only been dating a month, but Niki asks her to be his girlfriend officially and she accepts. Niki brings Ruthie with him on a visit to Harry in the hospital, where Harry, confused, says Niki’s deceased father was just there visiting him and bragging about what an incredible piano player Niki is. Niki brings in a piano so Ruthie can play for Harry, and meanwhile Marla tells Niki she’s found out he’s paid off the hospital bill. She is worried about him, and says that he should not do anything that could harm him and that she and Harry will be fine.

Uri calls Niki to another job which is way farther out, and Niki is confused when he arrives at what is clearly not a rich person’s home. He enters to find Uri’s crew there with some Korean gangsters, and Uri orders Niki to crack the safe. Niki is deeply uncomfortable and has a hard time due to the house being near the airport (planes constantly flying overhead creating noise) but does what Uri asks, cracking the safe that the gang members retrieve a small notebook from. Just then, the homeowner comes in holding them all at gunpoint, demanding they hand over the notebook – which contains codes to enter a cryptocurrency wallet. Holding a gun at Niki’s back, he orders him to tear up the codes and eat them, which Niki does. Suddenly, a gun goes off – Benny, who was outside on guard, has shot the homeowner. The loudness of the gunshot causes Niki to stumble out of the house in pain and he vomits on the street, declaring himself done with the robberies. Later at home, Niki logs into the crypto wallet – he had actually memorized the code words, and discovers access to 18 million dollars in drug money.

Niki begins ignoring Uri’s calls, and then Niki gets a call from Marla – Harry has passed away. At the shiva, Niki is upset to find Uri at the buffet, following him. Uri demands that Niki answer him when he calls, and implies that he might be willing to hurt Ruthie (who is there playing piano) if he refuses. Angry and depressed, Niki keeps ignoring the calls. Later, when Ruthie plays her composition on the piano for Niki in preparation for her show, Niki is barely listening. Ruthie gets upset that he can’t be supportive, and explains to Niki that she’s trying to go somewhere and build a career for herself, unlike Niki. Niki snaps back at her that he wanted to be doing what she does until he had to go to therapy for years to deal with his condition, and that he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do since he can’t play anymore – and then he says he’s a better piano player than Ruthie will ever be.

He leaves Ruthie’s apartment, angry with himself, when Uri and his guys pull up. Uri screams at Niki that he will answer when he calls, then uses an air horn which causes Niki to crumble to the ground in pain and then pass out. When he awakens, he sees that Uri and the Korean mobsters have found another set of codes for the crypto they need Niki to break into a safe and get. The air horn blast has left Niki’s ears ringing and he can’t hear the safe, and demands to be let go because he’s going to miss Ruthie’s concert. Uri tells him he won’t go anywhere until the safe is open. Niki manages to get the safe open – Uri and his crew celebrate the access codes, which show 17 million in the crypto account. Niki races to the performance but it too late – he misses Ruthie’s composition, which she plays while wearing the watch Niki gave her. She is watched intently by Maissner in the audience.

Maissner asks to meet with Ruthie, who is honored, and he asks her to be his new assistant on his next work. Ruthie is thrilled and accepts, but Maissner says he has to take care of some business first. He asks about her watch, which it turns out was stolen from his safe a few weeks ago. He explains that his father had two watches that survived the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and that both went missing. Ruthie is stunned and shocked and explains that her boyfriend gave them to her, just as Niki arrives. She confronts him, asking if he knew it was stolen. He can’t give her a straight answer, and she leaves, horrified. Niki sits down with Maissner, who seems put off from hiring Ruthie and is going to call the police, until Niki says he can get the other watch back and that Ruthie had nothing to do with the theft. Maissner agrees to hold off on calling the police.

Niki returns to Uri’s headquarters during one of their rave parties and sneaks into the back and breaks into the safe where the watch is supposed to be only to discover it isn’t there. He is then apprehended by Yoni who brings him outside where Uri, who is wearing the watch, begins beating Niki with a baseball bat and demands Benny retrieve the air horn. Niki tells Uri he just wants to get the watch back, that it survived the Holocaust, and that he will never contact Uri again. Yoni and Benny are disturbed, since they and Uri also had family survive the holocaust, and plead with Uri to stop. Uri refuses, brutally taking the air horn and putting it right up to Niki’s ear and blasting it over and over as Niki screams. He then grabs a knife and begins cutting Niki’s ear as he passes out.

Niki awakes in the hospital, bruised beaten and with the bottom of his ear cut off. Due to the air horn, he is now almost entirely deaf. When he retrieves his belongings while leaving the hospital, he finds that second watch among his things. Marla arrives at the hospital to see Niki, and later Niki gives her some of the money that he took off the top of the crypto wallet. Now without ear devices since he can barely hear at all anymore, Niki brings the watch to Maissner to return it. Maissner declares his debt with Niki settled, and leaves as Ruthie, who has gotten the job working for him, enters and is surprised to see Niki, especially so beaten and bruised. Uncomfortable, she starts to leave, and Niki sits down at the piano. With his hearing gone, he is finally able to play again, and begins playing the piano beautifully. Ruthie stops to listen as is deeply moved by his performance. After he finishes, Niki notes with his perfect pitch that one of the keys is off.

Niki White (Leo Woodall) is an apprentice piano tuner with hyperacusis, an extreme sensitivity to sound that forced him to end his piano playing. When his mentor Harry (Dustin Hoffman) becomes very ill and medical bills begin piling up, Harry begins working for thief Uri (Lior Raz) using his extreme hearing sensitivity to crack safes. He manages to make enough money to pay off Harry’s medical debt and begins dating Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), an aspiring piano composer. He gives her a fancy watch that was stolen out of one of the safes.

After an incident with one of the heists ends with a man shot, Niki tries to quit working for Uri, who refuses to let him stop, even after Harry passes away. Ruthie gets her dream job offer working for a composer named Maissner (Jean Reno), but he notices that her watch is a watch that had been stolen from him and had been passed down in his family through the Holocaust. She confronts Niki, angry and upset, and he tells Maissner he will get his remaining stolen watch back in exchange for not calling the police. He returns to Uri’s place to steal the watch back, but Uri catches him, beats him, and blasts his ears with an air horn, leaving him almost totally deaf. Hearing the story about the holocaust, he leaves the other watch with Niki, who is able to return it to Maissner. Ruthie is there, and since now he can’t hear and playing won’t cause him pain, Niki plays the piano.