Tuner

Niki White is the apprentice of New York City piano tuner Harry Horowitz, a friend of his late father. Once a gifted musician, Niki has hyperacusis and can no longer play piano, wearing ear protection at all times against loud noises. After Harry forgets the combination to his safe, Niki teaches himself to open it with his heightened hearing, discovering a talent for safe-cracking.

While tuning at a music conservatory, Niki meets Ruthie, a driven student pianist. At a wealthy client’s home, Niki interrupts a trio of Israeli thieves and breaks into the safe for them, earning a job offer from their leader, Uri. With Harry’s encouragement, Niki strikes up a romance with Ruthie after repairing her treasured piano, and reveals it took years of exposure therapy to manage his sensitivity to sound. After Harry is hospitalized after a heart attack, Niki accepts Uri’s offer, determined to save Harry and his wife Marla from debt. Proving himself on Uri’s own safe, Niki joins him, his accomplice Yoni, and nephew Benny as they use their security company to rob wealthy homes. Overcoming Ruthie’s misgivings about their relationship, Niki gives her a stolen watch and introduces her to Marla and the bedridden Harry, secretly paying his hospital bills.

Uri enlists Niki to open a safe for a pair of Korean gangsters, retrieving the seed phrase to their uncle’s cryptocurrency wallet. The uncle arrives, holding everyone at gunpoint and forcing Niki to eat the only copy of the password, but is shot dead by Benny. Niki flees, discovering that the wallet holds close to $18 million. Harry dies, and Uri surprises Niki at shiva, demanding his help to steal the digital key to the uncle’s money.

A grieving Niki decides not to join the robbery, but Ruthie’s anxiety about her upcoming performance and his own resentments of his lost musical career lead them to lash out at each other. Storming out of her apartment, Niki is captured by Uri’s crew. Disoriented by an air horn, he is forced to open the uncle’s safe before racing to Ruthie’s performance of her original work, with renowned composer Marius Maissner in the audience. Maissner invites Ruthie to join a new project as his assistant, but recognizes her watch as his grandmother’s heirloom, which survived the Holocaust alongside his grandfather’s watch before they were stolen from his safe. Niki arrives and is confronted by Ruthie, and admits the truth to Maissner. Assuring him that Ruthie is blameless, Niki offers to recover his grandfather’s watch in exchange for not involving the police.

Caught breaking into Uri’s safe, Niki begs for the watch and reveals its history. He convinces Benny and Yoni, but Uri viciously beats him and ruptures his eardrums in the process. Waking up in hospital, Niki discovers that doctors successfully repaired his earlobe damaged by Yuri, and that he is now partially deafened, but no longer needs earplugs to tolerate noise; Uri has also left him the watch. Leaving Marla his ill-gotten money, Niki delivers the watch to a grateful Maissner, who leaves him and Ruthie alone together. As an emotional Ruthie looks on, Niki gives a virtuoso piano performance for the first time in years, before declaring it needs tuning.