'Roofman' review: Channing Tatum outstanding in charming, disarming comedy-drama-romance
Channing Tatum gives a powerful performance in "Roofman": His acting is mysterious and instinctive. Credit: Paramount Pictures/Davi Russo
PLOT The true story of an escaped prisoner who falls in love with a churchgoing woman.
CAST Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Peter Dinklage
RATED R (language, adult themes, some violence)
LENGTH 2:06
WHERE Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE Lived-in performances and a sensitive screenplay make for a thoroughly engaging comedy-drama.
A former Army Ranger who robs enough McDonald’s restaurants to buy a new house is a pretty good story. His simple yet brilliant prison break makes it even better. But secretly living inside a Toys “R” Us for half a year while wooing a local woman and becoming a father-figure to her kids?
As the old Hollywood producers used to say: “Now that’s a movie.”
It's all true, too, according to “Roofman,” Derek Cianfrance’s charming, disarming comedy-drama-romance. Channing Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester, who in the 1990s hacked through the roofs of fast-food joints at night, held up the workers in the morning and, like a strip-mall Clyde Barrow, left his victims utterly charmed. Kirsten Dunst plays Leigh Wainscott, a divorced mom who strikes up a romance with Jeffrey after he wanders into her North Carolina church. “Roofman” is part romcom, part serious character study and completely enthralling, thanks to its two terrific leads and a sensitive screenplay by Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”) and Kirt Gunn (“Sound of Metal”).
Half the fun comes from Jeffrey’s astonishing combination of chutzpah, derring-do and creativity. He builds a makeshift apartment in the middle of the big box store, reprograms the security cameras, then rigs up baby monitors to surveil the staffers, including the warmhearted, hardworking Leigh. We’re so beguiled that when Jeffrey starts wooing her and warming up to her girls (Lily Collias as teenage Lindsay and Kennedy Maeve Moyer as younger Dee), we hardly even think about what a hurtful, deceitful thing he’s doing. A reminder comes when Jeffrey’s shady friend Steve (LaKeith Stanfield) promises a fake passport and a chance to start fresh -- far, far away.
Tatum never seems to be acting, as such. Like Keanu Reeves, he seems to be doing something instinctive, something mysterious, something else. And he’s perfect for this role: boyishly handsome, highly intelligent, physically gifted (his prison escape is like a little ballet), yet utterly selfish and destructive. “Probably genius level,” a prison guard says of Jeffrey on a newscast. “He’s also an absolute idiot.” Other standouts in the cast include Peter Dinklage as the officious store manager Mitch and Ben Mendelsohn as the easygoing Pastor Ron.
There comes a point in “Roofman” where Jeffrey botches everything so badly that it’s difficult to see how he’ll make it all O.K. The magic of the film is that, like Leigh, you believe with all your heart that he can.
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