"Tuner" is an ambitious low-budget indie fueled by two kinds of star power — one old-school, the other seductively new. The leads, Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu, aren't newbies, exactly — Woodall built considerable momentum in S2 of "The White Lotus" and Liu was already memorable in the high school lesbian comedy "Bottoms." But here they step forward fully formed in a ... how to describe it? ... rom-com/heist flick/sorta musical set in the little-explored world of New York piano tuners. Yes, at last.

Woodall, who has a muted charisma not unlike that of Tom Hardy, plays Niki White, a young man of few words who is employed by the piano-tuning business of his colorfully kvetching mentor, Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman). Together, Niki and Harry make the rounds of area concert halls and moneybag mansions, keeping the grand Steinways and Bosendorfers inside them in a state of precise intonation. Harry charges $5,000 for this service (the pianos themselves can cost hundreds of thousands), and business is brisk.

One of the story's several complications is provided by Niki, who suffers from an auditory disability called hyperacusis, which makes him unable to tolerate loud noises. (He wears earplugs and sound-muffling headphones whenever called upon to brave the outside world.) Niki has perfect pitch and as a kid dreamed of becoming a concert pianist himself. In a model show-don't-tell explication of this plot point, we watch as Niki meets Ruthie (Liu), a university composition student, in a rehearsal hall where she's preparing for an important concert. Ruthie finds Niki's story a little weird, which it is, until he demonstrates his musical acuity as she plays a series of complex chords on the piano and he is able to identify every note in each one by ear.

Niki and Ruthie become a couple and all seems well — until Niki is out on a mansion call one night, and comes upon a gang of burglars attempting to loot a safe in the target home. They're failing at it, so when Niki makes the mistake of telling them about his super-sharp hearing ability, they put him to work monitoring the click of the tumblers in the safe's combination lock. Soon the safe is cracked and the grateful gang boss (Lior Raz) hands Niki a sizeable wad of cash and offers to set him up in a highly remunerative life of crime. ("Your girlfriend, she's got beautiful hands," he says somewhat darkly.) Niki would normally have no interest in such a proposal, but it turns out that Harry is ill, and in desperate need of $36,000 to pay off a sudden gush of medical bills. So Niki reluctantly takes the plunge into the world of high-end theft.

The movie is beautifully shot (by Lowell A. Meyer) and especially well-edited (by Greg O'Bryant, echoing the urban hustle of the Safdie brothers' New York films). There's also a captivating soundtrack mixing classical music and jazz with electronic underpinnings. Most significantly, the picture announces the arrival of a substantial talent in director and cowriter Daniel Roher, whose first narrative feature this is. (He's already won an Oscar for his 2022 documentary "Navalny.") And along with heralding the ascent of new stars Woodall and Liu, it highlights the remarkable freshness of Dustin Hoffman's skills as he enters the 60th year of his cinematic career: the sharpest of his New York-y line readings here are delectably well-turned.

Photo courtesy of Black Bear Pictures