Director Derek Cianfrance\u2019s Roofman recounts the true story of former Army Ranger turned unlikely serial robber Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum). Given the titular nickname due to his modus operandi of breaking and entering through the roofs of the businesses he would steal from, the man was eventually apprehended in 2000 after burgling dozens of McDonald\u2019s restaurants over a multi-year period.<\/p>\n
Manchester, though, wasn\u2019t the dangerous menace to society that one might assume. On the contrary, he was a rather nice guy, as attested to by those who were held up by him. Tatum, then, plays Jeffrey as a bit of a loveable doofus\u2014incredibly smart but also stupid, as he\u2019s regularly described throughout Roofman\u2014and Cianfrance\u2019s breezy approach to the film complements the demeanor of its protagonist, for better and for worse.<\/p>\n
The bulk of Roofman takes place in the wake of Jeffrey escaping from prison in 2004. After an attempt to contact his family goes south when his ex-wife (Melonie Diaz) hangs up on him, he desperately searches for somewhere to hide out, eventually breaking into a Toys \u2018R\u2019 Us store in Charlotte, North Carolina. So begins a months-long residence where Jeffrey intrepidly sets up a makeshift home for himself in a vacant space behind one of the walls of the store. <\/p>\n
At night, Jeffrey emerges to procure M&Ms and baby food for sustenance and ride around the aisles on a children\u2019s bike, activities which the film depicts in kooky montages. Cianfrance has fun spotlighting the nostalgic consumerism of the early aughts, with period-specific product placement, from Xbox games to Tickle Me Elmo, incorporated into Jeffrey\u2019s stealthy jaunts.<\/p>\n
After successfully figuring out how to plug into the store\u2019s security system, Jeffrey begins to take an interest in the lives of the employees, particularly hard-working single mom Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst). Taken by Leigh\u2019s good nature, particularly in the face of her grouchy boss, Mitch (Peter Dinklage), Jeffrey jumps at the chance to slip out of the store with some merchandise and bring it to a local church toy drive that she\u2019s organizing. From here, he begins to get involved in the community, calling himself \u201cJohn Zorn\u201d and pretending to be a government agent with a classified job, and quickly woos and falls into a relationship with Leigh.<\/p>\n
Tatum and Dunst have an easy chemistry, which goes some way toward selling the routine rom-com path that the film goes down. As Jeffrey gets closer with Leigh and her two daughters (Lily Collias and Kennedy Moyer), he begins to have some semblance of a normal life, even though it puts him at risk of being recaptured. Watching all of this, you know that it\u2019s only a matter of time before Jeffrey\u2019s true identity will be revealed to the woman who\u2019s come to trust him.<\/p>\n
Despite Tatum\u2019s winning everyman charisma and the film adhering more or less closely to the facts of Manchester\u2019s deception, the emotional impact of the inevitable climax is dulled by the formulaic nature of almost everything that precedes it. That and the cognitive dissonance of Jeffrey becoming increasingly and happily involved in Leigh\u2019s daughters\u2019 lives while essentially being forced to forget about his own children whom he can\u2019t return to.<\/p>\n
In The Place Beyond the Pines<\/a>, Cianfrance evocatively captured how criminal acts have ripple effects across generations, and that theme is ripe for similar exploration in Roofman. But Jeffrey\u2019s young children and his relationship to them are only really up for discussion here when it\u2019s narratively convenient, in a moment that mostly underscores the obvious desire by the filmmakers to not complicate the feel-good template of the material. Manchester may in fact have been polite, but Cianfrance\u2019s film doesn\u2019t convince you that it needed to be as well.<\/p>\n Score:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u00a0Cast: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang, Peter Dinklage \u00a0Director: Derek Cianfrance \u00a0Screenwriter: Derek Cianfrance, Kirt Gunn \u00a0Distributor: Paramount Pictures \u00a0Running Time: 126 min \u00a0Rating: R \u00a0Year: 2025 \u00a0Venue: Toronto International Film Festival Since 2001, we’ve brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we\u2019re committed to keeping our content free and accessible\u2014meaning no paywalls or fees.<\/p>\n If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon<\/a> or making a donation<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Director Derek Cianfrance\u2019s Roofman recounts the true story of former Army Ranger turned unlikely serial robber Jeffrey Manchester…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-129691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129691","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=129691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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