Roofman Dir: Derek Cianfrance (13th Floor Film Review)
Roofman gives Channing Tatum the opportunity to show off his acting chops as the real-life spree robber Jeffrey Manchester who relieved a succession of McDonalds franchises of their takings and hid out in a Toys are Us store.
Starring: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield,
Director Derek Cianfrance’s back catalogue, Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond The Pines and The Light Between Oceans all about complex, humancentric stories with deeply flawed but inherently “good” characters at their centre. Stories where the path that people walk between good intentions and criminality is never a straight line.
It should come as no surprise then, that Roofman is another such study in human frailty and well-meaning people who are forced by circumstance into doing bad things. The difference here is that the protagonist is a real person and that this stranger than fiction tale really took place in North Carolina between 1998 and 2004.
The year is 1998 and Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) is a recently divorced dad and veteran with some serious financial problems.
With three young children to support and no regular income, Manchester stumbles upon the idea of robbing local fast-food franchises but entering through the roof under cover of darkness and lying in wait for the staff to open the store first thing in the morning.
Which sounds a lot more sinister than it was given that Manchester was nothing if not the softest Squishmallow to ever decide to embark on a life of crime.
More Tickle Me Elmo than Al Capone to the point that when locking an underdressed store manager in a walk-in fridge he sees him shivering and gives him his own coat.
To paraphrase my Mum, there is no bad unexpected refrigeration situation, only the wrong clothes.
Hardly the work of a hardened criminal mastermind. I half expected Manchester to have left his driver’s license in the coat pocket for the cops to find. But instead (Spoiler alert) he is not rumbled until two years later when he botches the hold-up of another of Ronald McDonald’s hangouts and ends up in a North Carolina prison.
Four years into his 45 year sentence, in a move worthy of The Great Escape, he manages to grant himself early parole by hiding underneath a delivery truck
While evading re-capture he ends up Charlotte where he takes refuge in the ceiling cavity of a Toys “R” Us store bathroom.
Proving that necessity is indeed the mother of invention, he waits until the store closes and scopes out the wider perimeter. Discovering that he can manually disable the security cameras he proceeds to fashion himself a nest behind a display unit.
As time passes, he feathers the nest with items from the shelves. It’s like The Terminal with peanut M&Ms and a Spiderman duvet.
In a stroke of genius, he even rigs up a network baby monitors to keep an eye on the store’s staff. One of whom, sunny natured single mother Leigh (a luminous Kirsten Dunst) he develops a protective attachment to when her obnoxious boss Mitch (Peter Dinklage) refuses to amend her shifts to accommodate her childcare.
Using Mitch’s password, gleaned from his bird’s eye view of the office, Manchester undertakes a spot of nocturnal roster adjustment on the unsuspecting Leigh’s behalf.
He attends a singles mixer of Leigh’s church under an assumed identity, and endears himself to her by donating toys he steals from the store to her toy drive.
Intrigued by the new guy in town, who adds to his mystic by claiming to be an undercover government agent, Leigh asks him on a date.
What unfolds from there is best left for the viewer to find out but Tatum and Dunst have a sweet chemistry that takes the film to a deeper level and keeps the second half from straying into rom-com territory.
Roofman also features a strong supporting cast in Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang
At its very big heart, Roofman is a romantic tale, but it is a romance base primarily on lies and omissions. Making Manchester not much different to 90% of men on dating apps only with far kinder intentions. Jeffrey is that rare thing, a criminal with a conscience and it is impossible not to root for a happy ending for him and Leigh, despite the odds most definitely NOT being in their favour.
Jo Barry
Roofman is in cinemas now.
