Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple
Roofman is a wild true story about Jeff Manchester (Tatum), a former Army ranger who fell on hard financial times in the late 1990's and resorted to robbing 45 McDonald's franchises in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. He then attracts attention with his sudden upward mobility and buying the sort of items Jimmy Conway warned against after the Lufthansa heist in Goodfellas. He's not your typical armed robber, though. He has a heart, demonstrated when he locks one McDonald's staff in a refrigerator and gives his coat to the manager who didn't have one. The judge doesn't see this mitigating factor and sentences him to 45 years in prison.
Jeff, however, finds a way to escape from prison and live on the lam for many months hiding out in a North Carolina Toys R'Us circa 2004. However, he falls for Leigh (Dunst), a recently divorced mom of two who has to deal with the prickly store manager Mitch (Dinklage), whose tactlessness and lack of sympathy is mistaken for good management skills. Jeff manages to create a relationship with Leigh while living in the Toys R'Us where she works (unbeknownst to everyone) and evading capture, although it is telling that the manhunt for him tends to go away long enough for this story to be told.
Tatum is endlessly charming as our nice-guy hero. There is also a sad element in which Jeff loses contact with his three children from his first marriage after going to prison, and he almost adopts Leigh's children as substitutes. Dunst is effortlessly appealing. But, the story itself suffers from its own limitations. It can't end happily or in any other fashion than how it concludes. How else would you make a movie based on this story? Is he suddenly pardoned or does he escape capture by fleeing to another country? Roofman is all setup and carries itself for a little while, but then we realize we aren't really going anywhere satisfactorily with this story.
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