When you need someone to play a criminal who’s easy to forgive, you call up Channing Tatum. He’s the big kid with the big soul, whose six-pack and close shave play in direct contrast to his dancer’s grace. You’ll see him bounce around like a lemur, but always with that little twinkle in his eye that says, “don’t break my heart, please. I’m fragile”.
He’s one reason Roofman works as well as it does. The second is his onscreen romantic partner, Kirsten Dunst, who’s forever honest and unadorned in her work, in a way that ensures her character here never feels like a mother substitute, or the saint who dares put up with all this. We’re simply watching two people who like each other very much, barrelling towards a titanium wall obstacle.
The problem is, Leigh’s (Dunst) new boyfriend, “John Zorn” (Tatum), is actually Jeffrey Manchester, recently self-liberated from the prison where he was being held for robbing 45 McDonald’s branches by sawing holes in their roofs and holding tight until the time of the Monday morning cash handover. Jeffrey is a true gentleman thief who, when ushering employees into the walk-in fridge at gunpoint, ensures they’ve all got their coats on. Or, if one of them forgets theirs, he gives them his own.
Manchester is a real person. Interview snippets played over the credits attest to the idea that he may have really been, as the film argues, “a nice guy” who “made some bad choices”. Roofman can’t help but salivate over the quirkier details of his escapades, especially his choice to hide, post-prison escape, in a Toys R Us store – inevitably, it leads to images of Tatum pulling a Risky Business in a pair of Heelys; sheepishly confessing to a dentist that his four cavities were caused by excessive exposure to candy; and clambering, lathered and butt-naked, up the side of a bike display after a store manager (Peter Dinklage) catches him washing in the men’s bathroom.
But Roofman isn’t quite the film it seems to be, even if it embraces the lighter touches of oddball, American true crime. Its director and co-writer, alongside Kirt Gunn, is Derek Cianfrance, typically a connoisseur of misery. He’s behind one of cinema’s ugliest breakups, Blue Valentine (2010), plus a depressing epic about generational burdens (2013’s The Place Beyond the Pines) and an even more depressing period piece about guilt and parenthood (2016’s The Light Between Oceans).
Cianfrance, for the most part, doesn’t switch up his approach to Roofman. There’s a chill in Andrij Parekh’s cinematography (he also shot Blue Valentine), with extended tracking shots that capture Jeffrey’s minute-by-minute thought process. Ben Mendelsohn’s back for a small role as a pastor who, alongside his wife (Uzo Aduba), first helps connect Jeffrey and Leigh. We get to hear how lovely his singing voice is. In Cianfrance’s hands, a shot of a Tickle Me Elmo, vibrating helplessly on the floor, feels newly tragic.
Cianfrance’s touch eventually helps shift the perspective away from the easy comedy of Manchester’s life, and towards a more subtle – and quite moving – portrait of a man desperate for a second shot at normality, after his ex-wife (Melonie Diaz) firmly cuts ties between him and his children. Here, Tatum and Dunst shine, and the film reaches its emotional climax with the roll of a single blob of mascara down her cheek. There’s always pain in the stories we cultivate for our own amusement.
Dir: Derek Cianfrance. Starring: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Uzo Aduba, Peter Dinklage. Cert 15, 126 minutes.
‘Roofman’ is in cinemas from 17 October
