Off-key rendering of race-against-time thriller

WHEN the biggest concern of the piano-playing protagonist you're watching isn't so much the note he's afraid of fumbling, but the literal bullet that the mistake will earn him, you know you're in for a nail-biting edge-of-the-seat thriller.

Grand Piano is unabashedly that sort of movie, though as far as it is concerned, a generous suspension of disbelief is essential concert etiquette. So long as the audience maintains that level of decorum, Grand Piano puts on quite the show, even if it doesn't go out with a - ahem - bang.

Wunderkind pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) returns to the concert hall burdened by the stage fright-induced disaster that was his last performance five years ago. The audience, his colleagues and even Selznick himself doubt whether he will do justice to the piano he will be playing - a 97-key Imperial Bösendorfer that belonged to his venerated, recently deceased mentor Patrick Godureaux.