Loads of crime movies make breaking the legislation look glamorous, however few are as healthful as “Roofman.” Director Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine,” The Place Past the Pines”) focuses on the human ingredient of his true-crime inspiration on this superficial crowd-pleaser, based mostly on the lifetime of a North Carolina man who escaped from jail after the collection of fast-food heists that gave this movie its title. He then proceeded to stay within the bowels of a Toys “R” Us retailer for greater than six months, earlier than being caught once more after committing one other armed theft on the similar retailer the place he had been hiding out.
It’s the form of yarn that earns the outline “stranger than fiction,” and the main points of how Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum, gaunter than traditional however simply as toned) was capable of construct a makeshift life out of things scavenged from a toy retailer are fascinating. (This was in 2004, so numerous “Spider-Man” merch was concerned.) Sadly, nonetheless, “Roofman” additionally capitulates to the feel-good calls for of Hollywood storytelling, leaving the pricklier elements of Manchester’s story on the desk. And the movie is forgettable in consequence.
Right here, “the human ingredient” means Jeffrey observing the on a regular basis dramas and petty energy struggles at Toys “R” Us by means of a collection of child screens he cleverly mounts within the supervisor’s workplace, not the crushing irony of him hiding out in a retailer overflowing with the identical plastic standing symbols that made him an outlaw within the first place. (As we study early on, the humiliation of not having the ability to purchase his daughter a motorbike for her sixth birthday was the inciting incident of Jeffrey’s prison profession.) The latter is method too political for this explicit movie, which is true at the same time as “Roofman” is overwhelmingly on Jeffrey’s facet.
LaKeith Stanfield co-stars as Steve, Jeffrey’s previous Military buddy who has a sideline in pretend passports. At one level, Steve leaves for a tour of responsibility in Afghanistan, and picks proper again up along with his forgery enterprise when he will get again. He does this not as a result of he’s a grasping particular person, nor for the fun of it; within the America wherein these characters stay, a bit law-bending is simply what you must do to get by. “Roofman” expends little effort contemplating the deeper (and, to be truthful, extra miserable) implications of this actuality; as a substitute, it shrugs and says that it’s okay, as a result of they’re actually not dangerous guys deep down.
That is very true for the character of Jeffrey, who Steve accuses of being a “dangerous prison” as a result of he cares an excessive amount of in regards to the folks round him. Tatum does stretch his appearing skills in scenes the place Jeffrey’s con-man charisma is underlaid with desperation and deception, however there’s nothing in Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn’s screenplay to significantly problem Tatum’s persona as a number one man. The opening scene is downright charming, as Jeffrey breaks right into a McDonald’s earlier than opening and takes three staff hostage, insisting that they placed on their coats earlier than he locks them within the walk-in freezer in order that they don’t get chilly. The supervisor doesn’t have a coat that morning, so Jeffrey lends him his.
Making Jeffrey any much less likable would utterly sink the second half of “Roofman,” which slows the tempo to a meander as Jeffrey begins a candy romance with Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a single mother who works on the Toys “R” Us. There’s a world the place it’s creepy for Jeffrey to courtroom Leigh after secretly watching her for months, however once more, this isn’t that form of film. As a substitute, Cianfrance simplifies one other difficult dynamic as Leigh, her daughters, and the married couple (Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba) who preach at her church embrace Jeffrey — or, as they know him, “John Zorn” — with the open-hearted naiveté that solely church folks can have. If Leigh has any reservations about “John’s” sudden look from “New York Metropolis,” or his extraordinarily fake-sounding job, she doesn’t specific them. This isn’t a flaw in her character, however yet one more symptom of a working-class exhaustion that’s current, however by no means addressed, within the story.
Tatum and Dunst have good romantic chemistry, though Dunst actually shines when “Roofman” briefly will get each extra severe and extra artfully shot late within the movie. Her disappointment at studying that, no, she will’t simply have one thing good occur to her for as soon as is devastating, and too little display screen time is devoted to it. It’s all a part of an ethical footnote that looks like an obligation — okay, wonderful, perhaps it’s not cool to be a prison, even if you’re good and charming and unusually agile — in comparison with the movie’s comedic scenes. Of those, Peter Dinklage emerges as an underdog MVP as the shop’s dickhead supervisor, significantly in a scene the place he catches Jeffrey bare and showering within the males’s room sink. On the entire, nonetheless, “Roofman” is extra of a slog than a romp, largely due to an prolonged 119-minute run time that also leaves a lot of its juiciest components unexplored.
Buzz round “Roofman” will undoubtedly deal with its true-crime components, in addition to the reconstituted Toys “R” Us retailer the place a lot of the movie takes place. Nostalgia is one factor, however if you happen to actually give it some thought, there’s one thing perverse about taking the husk of a sequence retailer pushed to chapter by leveraged buyouts and rebuilding it utilizing cash from a film studio partially owned by a personal fairness agency to inform the life story of a person who, by his personal recounting, grew to become a thief as a result of he couldn’t present for his youngsters by doing issues “the best method.” The distinction is, Jeffrey Manchester went to jail for what he did.
Grade: C+
“Roofman” premiered on the 2025 Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. Paramount will launch the movie in theaters on Friday, October 10.
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