GRAND PIANO (2014)

Genre: Thriller/Suspense
Director: Eugenio Mira  
Cast: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Allen Leech, Kerry Bishé, Tamsin Egerton, Don McManus, Alex Winter
RunTime: 1 hr 31 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: http://www.magnetreleasing.com/grandpiano/

Opening Day: 27 March 2014

Synopsis: Tom Selznick, the most talented pianist of his generation, stopped performing in public because of his stage fright. Years after a catastrophic performance, he reappears in public in a long-awaited concert in Chicago. In a packed theater, in front of the expectant audience, Tom finds a message written on the score: "Play one wrong note and you die." Without leaving the piano, Tom must discover the anonymous sniper's motives and look for help without anyone realizing.

Movie Review:

You’ve got to hand it to director Eugenio Mira for essentially setting a race-against-time thriller entirely within the confines of a crowded concert hall. Yes, you read that right; however unlikely it does sound, ‘Grand Piano’ is a minute-by-minute ticker that sees a young classical pianist fight for his life - and that of his beautiful actress-wife - by ensuring that he hits all the right notes with each of the pieces that he plays.

Elijah Wood stars as the celebrated pianist Tom, who after a five-year sabbatical, is making a much-hyped return to the stage. His last performance of an impossible piece called ‘La Cinquette’ had left him with stage fright, and in the opening minutes, we see how the prodigy is just as nervous despite the hiatus. But still, with the support of his wife Emma (Kerry Bishe), Tom manages to steady himself to make it back onstage to perform live with a full orchestra.

As he turns the pages, Tom finds a warning scrawled in red ink: “Play one wrong note and you die”. There are of course some frantic minutes where Tom rushes back off and on stage in order to verify the authenticity of the threat, notwithstanding the red beam from a sniper’s rifle which he sees trained on him and then Emma from somewhere within the circle seats of the hall. But mostly, Mira wisely has Tom going forcefully at the keys of the piano, which forms the basis for some of the more intriguing and interesting scenes of the movie.

Indeed, Mira’s use of music to amp up the tension is impressive to say the least. As a director who has composed the music for his own films before, Mira effectively chooses the pieces to fit each scene, in particular such that Tom’s musical performances effectively convey the mood of each sequence, crescendo-ing just as one reaches its climax. But Mira’s mastery of the art of the thriller goes way beyond that.

Clearly influenced by the B-movie thrillers by Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, Mira employs a similar bag of tricks - long Steadicam follows, deep-focus split screens, vertigo-inducing swoops and aggressive dollies - to keep his viewer on tenterhooks, complemented by Unax Mendia’s fleet camera moves as well as Jose Luis Romeu’s fidgety editing. Even as writer Damien Chazelle’s script slowly loses its lustre as it reveals an all-too conventional reason for Tom’s predicament, Mira never lets the suspense let up one minute, making sure that his audience remains enraptured by his manipulation of images and sound.

It’s no secret from the trailer that John Cusack plays the villain here, but those looking for a head-on confrontation between Cusack and Wood will probably be disappointed, as the former only makes an appearance right at the end. Most of the time, the two trade barbs over Tom’s phone, which he uses to maintain voice contact with his nemesis while pounding the custom Bösendorfer that once belonged to his mentor. Nonetheless, Wood more than holds the screen with his saucer-eyed stare locked in a permanent state of panic, playing Tom as an ultra-neurotic aesthete.

Though it does strain credibility, ‘Grand Piano’ still enthrals with a suitably loopy premise, confident execution and some truly mesmerising combination scene compositions. Unlikely as it may seem, Mira’s high-concept thriller does come close to matching the adrenaline rush that other such race-against-time movies hope to accomplish in their audience. Just accept first and foremost that this is no more than B-movie pulp; then sit back and enjoy the music. 

Movie Rating:

(Tense and thrilling - this race-against-time thriller set in a concert hall will have you enraptured)

Review by Gabriel Chong