Cinema has the power to shape the opinions of all groups of people. Four people AIDS there’s Tom Hanks Philadelphia (1993); Trans women are Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) or Buffalo Bill The Silence of the Lambs (1991); both with Jared Leto in the middle Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Autistic people by Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (1988) – archetypal .“a retard”, as his brother played by Tom Cruise repeatedly called him, later used for his savant skills.
Leo Woodall’s Niki White on Tunerdirected by Daniel Roher, has never been described as autistic, only as having a heightened sensitivity to sound known as hyperacusis. It is a condition often associated with neurodivergence, including autism, and is related to other conditions seen in Hypersensitive People, such as misophonia – yet Tuner hyperacusis appears to exist separately from other conditions. Niki is a classic bully, so sensory impaired that she needs to wear noise-cancelling headphones to function in the world, but well-suited to playing piano because of her beautiful voice. Once a gifted pianist, he no longer plays.
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One night while working on a tool for a wealthy client, Niki is interrupted by a group of burglars trying to break into the home’s safe – a task that, miraculously, Niki is able to crack on her own. It’s a very vague rehash of Edgar Wright Baby Driver (2017), with fewer needle drops and the most important difference being the car chases that make for more entertaining viewing than Woodall twiddling with metal knobs. If it happens to be compatible with Rain Man which needs to be clearer, Hoffman himself plays Niki’s mentor and confidant, standing aside to let Woodall make the savantism fun.
The only compelling part of the film is the ethereal Havana Rose Liu, who plays pianist and composer Ruthie. He sets out to impress Marius Maissner, a naive stereotype of the European maestro played by Jean Reno, leading to a wildly chaotic adventure of an accident that really needs to be seen to be believed. His romance with Niki is cleverly played, although one gets the impression that this subplot is what prevents Roher from confirming that he has neurodivergence – as is well known, autistic people do not have sex. What could have been a bold step forward has yielded to a relapse into old fears.
Under stressful conditions, Tuner it’s just a bad movie. The first safe-cracking sequence may be reasonably exciting, but repeated over and over becomes very dull. The sound design is clunky, it’s as if Niki gets hyperacusis when the scene turns up the volume too much. Roher and Robert Ramsey’s script plays along with grim foreboding, managing to hit every tired note in the heist genre and .“lame movie.” Instead of innovation, Tuner it is a contradictory rhapsody on a broken theme.
