Plenty of crime films make breaking the law look glamorous, but few are as wholesome as “Roofman.” Director Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine,” The Place Beyond the Pines”) focuses on the human element of his true-crime inspiration in this superficial crowd-pleaser, based on the life of a North Carolina man who escaped from prison after the series of fast-food heists that gave this film its title. He then proceeded to live in the bowels of a Toys “R” Us store for more than six months, before being caught again after committing another armed robbery at the same store where he had been hiding out.
It’s the kind of yarn that earns the description “stranger than fiction,” and the details of how Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum, gaunter than usual but just as toned) was able to build a makeshift life out of items scavenged from a toy store are fascinating. (This was in 2004, so a lot of “Spider-Man” merch was involved.) Unfortunately, however, “Roofman” also capitulates to the feel-good demands of Hollywood storytelling, leaving the pricklier aspects of Manchester’s story on the table. And the film is forgettable as a result.
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Here, “the human element” means Jeffrey observing the everyday dramas and petty power struggles at Toys “R” Us through a series of baby monitors he cleverly mounts in the manager’s office, not the crushing irony of him hiding out in a store overflowing with the same plastic status symbols that made him an outlaw in the first place. (As we learn early on, the humiliation of not being able to buy his daughter a bike for her sixth birthday was the inciting incident of Jeffrey’s criminal career.) The latter is way too political for this particular film, which is true even as “Roofman” is overwhelmingly on Jeffrey’s side.
LaKeith Stanfield co-stars as Steve, Jeffrey’s old Army buddy who has a sideline in fake passports. At one point, Steve leaves for a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and picks right back up with his forgery business when he gets back. He does this not because he’s a greedy person, nor for the thrill of it; in the America in which these characters live, a little law-bending is just what you have to do to get by. “Roofman” expends little effort considering the deeper (and, to be fair, more depressing) implications of this reality; instead, it shrugs and says that it’s okay, because they’re really not bad guys deep down.
This is especially true for the character of Jeffrey, who Steve accuses of being a “bad criminal” because he cares too much about the people around him. Tatum does stretch his acting abilities in scenes where Jeffrey’s con-man charisma is underlaid with desperation and deception, but there’s nothing in Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn’s screenplay to seriously challenge Tatum’s persona as a leading man. The opening scene is downright charming, as Jeffrey breaks into a McDonald’s before opening and takes three employees hostage, insisting that they put on their coats before he locks them in the walk-in freezer so that they don’t get cold. The manager doesn’t have a coat that morning, so Jeffrey lends him his.
Making Jeffrey any less likable would completely sink the second half of “Roofman,” which slows the pace to a meander as Jeffrey begins a sweet romance with Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a single mom who works at the Toys “R” Us. There’s a world where it’s creepy for Jeffrey to court Leigh after secretly watching her for months, but again, this isn’t that kind of movie. Instead, Cianfrance simplifies another complicated 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 only church people can have. If Leigh has any reservations about “John’s” sudden appearance from “New York City,” or his extremely fake-sounding job, she doesn’t express them. This isn’t a flaw in her character, but yet another symptom of a working-class exhaustion that’s present, but never addressed, in the story.
Tatum and Dunst have good romantic chemistry, although Dunst really shines when “Roofman” briefly gets both more serious and more artfully shot late in the film. Her disappointment at learning that, no, she can’t just have something good happen to her for once is devastating, and too little screen time is dedicated to it. It’s all part of a moral footnote that feels like an obligation — okay, fine, maybe it’s not cool to be a criminal, even if you are smart and charming and unusually agile — compared to the film’s comedic scenes. Of these, Peter Dinklage emerges as an underdog MVP as the store’s dickhead manager, particularly in a scene where he catches Jeffrey naked and showering in the men’s room sink. On the whole, however, “Roofman” is more of a slog than a romp, largely because of an extended 119-minute run time that still leaves many of its juiciest elements unexplored.
Buzz around “Roofman” will undoubtedly focus on its true-crime elements, as well as the reconstituted Toys “R” Us store where much of the film takes place. Nostalgia is one thing, but if you really think about it, there’s something perverse about taking the husk of a chain store driven to bankruptcy by leveraged buyouts and rebuilding it using money from a movie studio partially owned by a private equity firm to tell the life story of a man who, by his own recounting, became a thief because he couldn’t provide for his children by doing things “the right way.” The difference is, Jeffrey Manchester went to prison for what he did.
Grade: C+
“Roofman” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Paramount will release the film in theaters on Friday, October 10.
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