{"id":120410,"date":"2025-09-07T08:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T08:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120410\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T08:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T08:29:07","slug":"channing-tatum-charms-as-toys-r-us-dwelling-crook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120410\/","title":{"rendered":"Channing Tatum Charms as Toys R Us-Dwelling Crook"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGetting robbed at gunpoint can be a traumatizing thing, though \u201cRoofman<\/a>\u201d subject Jeffrey Manchester\u2019s victims describe him as unusually conscientious. Breaking into McDonald\u2019s restaurants to steal the loot, he\u2019d lock the employees up in the cooler, but not before making sure they were wearing enough layers to keep warm. If not, he might even give them the coat off his back. As played by Channing Tatum<\/a>, with maximum charm, the criminal finds a roundabout way to your heart: through the roof. <\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Derek Cianfrance<\/a>\u2019s \u201cRoofman\u201d takes its title from the news media, which nicknamed Manchester according to his uncommon MO: Where other burglars might go through the back door or one of the windows, this guy would knock a hole in the roof and lower himself down, wait till morning and then force the manager to empty the registers \u2014 politely, of course. He knocked over 45 McDonald\u2019s (or comparable targets) before getting caught, although \u201cRoofman\u201d re-creates only the last of those.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie primarily focuses on what comes next, after Jeffrey went to jail, finagled his way out and took up residence in the overlooked corners of a Toys R Us store in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jeffrey eventually became romantically involved with a local woman, Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst), who\u2019s shown here working at the same toy store. That\u2019s an odd change by Cianfrance and co-writer Kirt Gunn, since it makes both characters a lot dimmer than they were. Then again, one of the key takeaways of \u201cRoofman\u201d is that Manchester was brilliant in some ways and not so bright in others.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe wasn\u2019t exactly Robin Hood, but \u201cRoofman\u201d belongs to that grand American tradition, dating back at least to \u201cBonnie and Clyde,\u201d of asking audiences to root for the \u201cbad guys.\u201d And why wouldn\u2019t we, when the movie treats Manchester as a model dad in all respects but the law-breaking one? That string of McDonald\u2019s heists was motivated by a desire to provide for his family, although it\u2019s a good thing the 70 million or so other fathers in this country don\u2019t go about it the same way.<\/p>\n

\n\tFifteen years ago, Cianfrance established his artistic reputation directing Ryan Gosling in the films \u201cBlue Valentine\u201d and \u201cThe Place Beyond the Pines,\u201d gritty-but-grand depictions of doomed romance and dashed ambitions. Those themes remain, but in Tatum, he has another movie-star avatar to pin those dreams to. The pair seem to get one another, the way Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood did, or Stuart Rosenberg and Paul Newman, and we can hope that \u201cRoofman\u201d (which could be the duo\u2019s \u201cCool Hand Luke\u201d) is the first, instead of the only, time they work together.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a tendency in Hollywood movies about slippery crooks and con men to treat the spree as one big laugh (I\u2019m thinking of such recent examples as \u201cThe Old Man and the Gun\u201d and \u201cI Love You Phillip Morris,\u201d even though Cianfrance channels more of a \u201970s feel). While \u201cRoofman\u201d is entertaining enough, neither the director nor his star sees Manchester\u2019s story as a joke. If anything, it\u2019s a low-key tragedy, in which this damaged U.S. Army veteran (discharged before the film begins) loses one family and seems well on his way to starting over, but sabotages his chances by falling back into old patterns.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe script supplies an entire character, Jeffrey\u2019s less-than-legal Army buddy Steve (LaKeith Stanfield), to observe, \u201cYou\u2019ve got like the calculation down, but you\u2019re just goofy,\u201d by which he means inconsistent, though \u201cgoofy\u201d is a good word for it. Tatum, who endearingly played a bona fide idiot in \u201c21 Jump Street,\u201d interprets Jeffrey as paradoxically intelligent and impulsive, a near-cartoonish combo that recalls Nicolas Cage\u2019s turn in \u201cRaising Arizona.\u201d
The way Jeffrey turns that Toys R Us into his personal domain \u2014 the dream of any kid who grew up singing, \u201cI don\u2019t want to grow up\u201d \u2014 is never once presented as pathetic, though it might sound that way on paper.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, production designer Inbal Weinberg deserves extra credit for re-creating that vintage Toys R Us store. (The real one was adjacent to a Circuit City and wouldn\u2019t have featured nearly so many Tickle Me Elmo dolls.) For nearly six months, Jeffrey survived on junk food and candy and if the movie is to be believed, danced around in his undies and Heelys \u2014 those roller-skate tennis shoes from the early 2000s \u2014 and sometimes less, since the \u201cMagic Mike\u201d star knows his audience and gives them what that franchise never could, stopping just shy of the full monty.<\/p>\n

\n\tCianfrance supplies a real jerk of a manager in Peter Dinklage\u2019s Mitch, on whom Jeffrey spies by setting up baby monitors in the back office. Mitch mistreats a young employee named Otis (Emory Cohen) and shows no generosity toward Leigh (Dunst), which in movie morality means he deserves what\u2019s coming to him. By contrast, Jeffrey goes out of his way to help the employees, breaking into Mitch\u2019s computer to change their timesheets and stealing a trash bag full of goodies to donate to the toy drive at Leigh\u2019s church.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurely Leigh would have put things together, if Jeffrey lavished her two girls with gifts from the same place that she worked (if she wanted them to have all those toys, she could\u2019ve used her employee discount). At the rate things go missing around the store, there\u2019s a good chance her boss might have started to make things difficult for her and the other employees. One could poke holes or just roll with it, as Cianfrance and Tatum put their heads together to supply half a dozen unforgettable set-pieces, from Jeffrey\u2019s laid-back prison break to the scene where he buys Leigh\u2019s eldest daughter (Lily Collias) a beater and pushes it to the limit.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, it\u2019s the through-the-roof chemistry between the two leads that makes the film worthy of repeat viewing. Tatum is no longer the cocky teenager he was in the \u201cStep Up\u201d movies all those years ago, as the star\u2019s affected swagger has eased into a natural confidence, while Dunst brings just the right amount of wariness to a woman who\u2019s devoted to her kids and devout in her faith. While she plays Leigh as closed off to love, leave it to Tatum to find that unconventional point of entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting robbed at gunpoint can be a traumatizing thing, though \u201cRoofman\u201d subject Jeffrey Manchester\u2019s victims describe him as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[55358,57438,96,2839,57439,44277,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-120410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-channing-tatum","tag-derek-cianfrance","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-roofman","tag-toronto-film-festival","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}