"Tuner" and "Pressure"

This past spring was awfully light on memorable new releases, so I'm highlighting a few of the smaller titles aimed at grown-ups that you might have missed.  

"Tuner" is the narrative feature debut of Daniel Rohrer, who made "Navalny" and several other well-regarded documentaries.  It's a thriller about an apprentice piano tuner named Niki (Leo Woodall), who suffers from hyperacusis.  This means that his hearing is so sensitive to noise that he has to constantly wear earplugs and headphones, but it also unexpectedly gives him the ability to break into safes.  

This is an old fashioned kind of thriller, in the same vein as other character-focused heist movies like Michael Mann's "Thief."  Niki becomes involved in a life of crime almost by accident.  His beloved mentor, Harry (Dustin Hoffman) takes ill and needs the money.  And then he falls in love with a pretty music student, Ruthie (Havan Rose Liu), who becomes another point of leverage.  Of course, he trusts the wrong person, in this case an Israeli alarm system installer named Uri (Lior Raz), who brings Niki in on more and more dangerous jobs.  I like that Rohrer takes his time showing us how Niki functions and the progression of his relationships long before the safecracking element comes into play.  I would have been happy to watch an entire film that was just about Niki and Harry being piano tuners, making their trips to a series of rich people's houses to lovingly tune all the fancy pianos that are barely ever played.      

I wouldn't call "Tuner" slow, with its rapid-fire montages of safecracking attempts and the use of anxiety-inducing soundscapes that torture Niki when his jobs become more dire.  However, the pacing is very deliberate and patient, giving the quieter performances the time to breathe.  I like Leo Woodall as Niki, and his presence here wouldn't be half as effective if he didn't have a director who was willing to give him the space to exist onscreen the way he does.  I also like the use of music - we get to listen in on several piano and orchestral performances for decently long stretches of time, which allow us to actually take them in and appreciate them more fully.  Frankly, I can't remember the last time that happened, and I appreciate "Tuner" all the more for it.    

Now on to "Pressure," a movie I didn't have high hopes for.  There have been so many films about WWII and D-Day in the last few years, covering it from every possible angle.  I was a little exasperated to find that director Anthony Maras and writer David Haig had somehow managed to make a movie about the D-Day weather forecast.  Seriously, the movie is about Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott), the meteorologist who predicted inclement weather and got the Normandy invasion delayed by a day, averting possible disaster.  It didn't help that Brendan Fraser was blustering around the screen as  Dwight D. Eisenhower, threatening to make the movie look even more like a parody of typical Oscar bait.  Fortunately, despite doing absolutely nothing original in the script or direction, "Pressure" is still a perfectly good watch.  It's executed well, Andrew Scott's performance is excellent, and there is something to be said for knowing exactly what you're getting.

Of course the story of James Stagg is exaggerated for the big screen. I highly doubt that Stagg was pitted against his fellow meteorologist, Colonel Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina), who is set up as a brash American rival.  Nor would he have needed championing by Eisenhower's secretary, the lovely and sensible Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon).  Surely Stagg didn't need to deliver an impassioned defense of his forecast to Eisenhower and the other top brass in charge of Operation Overlord.  However, a good melodrama is helped along by all of these things, and though I can see this movie exasperating history buffs, it's also nice to see a minor historical personage getting a little more attention.  And as D-Day approaches and the storm clouds gather, and the music gets more intense, it's perfectly enjoyable to see the whole drama play out, knowing that everything works out all right in the end for the good guys.  

So, this isn't particularly sophisticated or groundbreaking entertainment, but it does the job.  Some good actors get a chance to deliver some stirring monologues, and the archival footage we've all seen before gets trotted out again, spruced up a bit for yet another bit of WWII silver screen mythmaking.  And if this sounds like the kind of movie you would enjoy, surely you wouldn't want it any other way.

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