“Criminals are cold and calculating. You’ve got the calculating part down, but you’re goofy.”
Channing Tatum shows remarkable depth while Kirsten Dunst knocks it out of the park in the wistful Roofman, a very well-made movie about a very weird, real-life guy named Jeff Manchester. Roofman is an excellent character study of an incorrigible, inveterate criminal who persuades himself that he is doing the right thing, but is swallowed and undone by his unslakable greed for his deep desires of domestic bliss. Is it a Rom-Com? No. While there are romantic moments in the picture, it’s not a romance; Manchester is a liar living multiple lies through multiple lives. Is it a comedy? There are some very funny moments and very funny lines in Roofman, but ultimately, everything crashes down at the end, and Roofman collapses into a Brobdingnagian tragedy.
Roofman is a 2025 Paramount/Skydance Media production directed by Derek Cianfrance from a story he wrote with Kirt Gunn. Stars Kirsten Dunst and Channing Tatum lead a cast including Ben Mendelsohn, Juno Temple, LaKeith Stanfield, Peter Dinklage, Lily Collias, and Kennedy Moyer.
“Every prisoner wants the same thing: to get out of prison.”
Jeff Manchester (Tatum) blames his dissolving marriage on his inability to afford the lifestyle he imagines for himself and wants for his children. He decides that the best way to do better for his family is to become a serial robber of McDonalds franchises across several states, using the skills he acquired in the 82nd Airborne and in the 481st Reserve Transportation Company. The media begin to refer to him as “the Roofman” for his MO of cutting holes in the fast-food restaurants’ roofs and entering from the ceiling. 45 thefts later, everything is going swimmingly for Manchester until the cops come for him during his daughter’s birthday party.
The Judge throws the book at Jeff, and he gets 45 years in the grey-bar hotel. His wife cuts the cord; she won’t answer his calls. Desperate to reunite with his daughter, he gets a job in the prison metal shop and plots his escape. Manchester is smart and quite observant, a talent he honed while in the service to the point that he notices things that others’ eyes elide over. He montages through the implementation of his planned abscondence and sneaks out of the prison beneath a truck.
Travelling to see his daughter, he discovers that she has moved on. It breaks him. He resolves to get out of Dodge as soon as possible, but has to wait for his former non-com, Sgt Steve (Stanfield), who now works as a counterfeiter and can provide the documents Manchester needs to start a new life, but who won’t be back for six months.
Evading the cops, he sets up shop in a sales display in the bike section of a Toys “R” Us managed by the tyrannical Mitch (Dinklage), who delights in the misery of his employees, including Leigh (Dunst), a woman struggling with raising her two daughters after her recent divorce.
Jeff stops the store’s security system from recording and accessorizes his secret refuge in the bike display with baby monitors he wires throughout the store to spy on the employees, allowing him free range of the building. He bathes in the bathrooms using Sesame Street soap, subsists on baby food and candy and tries to keep his head down while killing time, waiting for Steve’s return.
Watching Leigh’s kind interactions with her coworkers, Manchester begins to take a shine to her. She tries to gather donations for a toy drive at her church, but Mitch rejects her out of hand, explaining that their goal is to sell toys because they work in a toy store. Jeff isn’t going to leave things at that, and gathering up a big bag of toys, he ventures out to her church before being drawn into the proceedings by the grateful congregation led by Pastor Ron (Mendelsohn). Aching from his self-enforced isolation and wanting Leigh’s company, he adopts the moniker, “John Zorn,” and allows himself to be swept into the event.
Can Jeff keep his double life a secret from Leigh? Will Leigh fall for the friend from church who claims to be a government spy? Will Mitch realize that the thief of the missing merchandise is living behind the bike display? Will the cops ever catch up with “Mr. Zorn”? Please see Roofman and find out.
“We promise you, we will be here tomorrow, as long as you promise never to grow up.”
Beneath the absurdities and banter, Roofman is a dolorous movie. Roofman is a tragedy. Peter Dinklage’s Mitch is a magnificent dick, a glorious bastard, but he’s not the bad guy here; Manchester is. Jeff destroys his own family, and his duplicity preys on Leigh’s desperation for a partner to share the load of parenting with. Though bristling with military training and analytical mind, his selfishness drives him to solve his problems with the solutions of a child. Don’t have enough money? Don’t get a better job or a degree or move; start stealing stuff. Don’t have a partner? Worm your way into someone’s life with lies and borrow theirs.
Straightforward direction by Cianfrance depicts Manchester’s loneliness with a slow dolly away from the empty Toys “R” Us, only Tatum’s head peeking out through the large glass plates, or a single escaped balloon rolling up a rooftop, only to get lost in the sky. When he wants us to understand a single church member is a Cougar, he dresses the middle-aged woman in stilettos and spilling out of tight, leopard-print top.
There are some drop-dead, hysterically funny comedy beats in Roofman, but the one that got the biggest reaction from the audience was a scene where a naked, soaked, and suds-covered Tatum tries to hide from detection behind a pedestal fan before making a bare-assed break to his sanctum.
Though the real-world circumstances behind Roofman are so bizarre and the duplicitous Jeff Manchester is so perverse, Channing Tatum is so charming, the screenplay so clever, his chemistry with Kirsten Dunst is so palpable that even after realizing the movie would end in calamity one way or another, this reviewer was hard-pressed to tear his eyes from the screen.
Roofman will be in theatres 10/10/2025.
Jeff Manchester will be eligible for parole in 2036.
Newsdesk