A pianist with stage fright endures a performance under the eyes of a mysterious sniper, who will shoot and kill him if a wrong note is played.
Director: Eugenio Mira
Stars: Elijah Wood, John Cusack, Kerry Bishé.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2039345/
Watched online, ok visually, but extremely out of sync aurally.
3 songs in the Soundtracks, but I believe others were played onstage by EW's character.
The piano, custom-built by a deceased composer/pianist, who built a lock into the keyboard. Inside is supposed to be something worth a lot of $$, or the key to it. The music that unlocks it can only be played by EW (and the dead guy) because the tempo is so fast. This is the first time the piano has been onstage. The sniper (JC, only a voice for most of the film) tries to get EW to play the combination precisely to open the piano's secret chamber. EW deliberately misses a note, and the sniper balks on his threats. EW gets his wife to sing from her boxseat while he goes backstage toward her. The sniper meets him in the hallway and they fight. The fight progresses to the catwalk above the stage, and they fall, with JC doing a hard landing on the piano. Later, when the mangled piano is on the moving van, EW plays the notes again, and we hear the mechanism unlock the chamber, and EW bends down toward it, but the film ends. MacGuffin avoided.
Sorta suspenseful for a single viewing, but I'm spoiling it to avoid a repeat.
Rated 5.9 (16,059)
indie, dir. Mira; 6-
