by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Juno Temple, Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield, Ben Mendelsohn, Uzo Aduba
Intro:
… accessible and humorous …
Having built a solid pedigree of confronting and emotionally devastating domestic drama over the past decade-and-a-half, the latest from writer/director Derek Cianfrance is quite the change-up. Not just because of its lighter tone as a crime-comedy, but because it’s based on a 2000s viral news story about Jeffrey Manchester, dubbed ‘Roofman’ for his method of drilling his way into various McDonald’s locations and dropping in from the roof to rob the place. And evidently, comedy is a far better avenue for his style of storytelling than it would seem at first blush.
Channing Tatum as the Roofman shares quite a few similarities with the flawed leads of Cianfrance’s past work, particularly Luke from The Place Beyond the Pines. He’s another struggling father who turns to a life of crime because he sees it as the only way he can provide for his wife and children.
Roofman acknowledges that Jeffrey isn’t the brightest M&M in the packet. He’s the dumbest smart guy, in the words of LaKeith Stanfield’s Steve (conversely the smartest smart guy in the film), where his natural inclination towards kindness and consideration of others makes him an ill fit for a line of work that requires coldness and detachment.
Like Blink Twice, Tatum’s charismatic presence is effectively weaponised here, as it frequently creates intrigue around just how genuine the character truly is, with the film neither directly clarifying nor condemning.
The story is mainly framed around the months that he spent hiding out in a toy store, trying to start a new life after both escaping prison and learning that his family have moved on without him. There’s a noticeable tonal shift once he gets dragged into a local church where Ben Mendelsohn is singing with the gospel choir, leaning away from the naturalistic crime capering into broader social cringe comedy, but it’s a shift that works well.
Tatum alongside Kirsten Dunst as love interest Leigh are both natural and funny together, and their pairing helps bring out the underlying (albeit misguided) intent behind Jeffrey’s actions.
Along with continuing themes that Cianfrance has built his career on, like flawed father figures, being confronted with the consequences of one’s actions, and the reality of doing the wrong things for the right reasons, the real tragedy of all this is that while Jeffrey is definitely a bumbling idiot savant, not all of his circumstances are solely his own fault. From the unusually-effective product placement, to Jeffrey donning fake branded merchandise as part of his post-escape disguise (as if the logos for Nike and Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax are a kind of armour), to his internal reasoning that owning things leads to happiness, the film is quite adamant about showing Jeffrey as the product of a society that puts emphasis on product. And when that way of thinking is paired with his low-income life, the increasingly predictable (and face-palmingly funny) situations that he finds himself in make a morbid kind of sense. His heart’s in the right place, his brain regularly struggles to find that place, and his wallet lacks the three $s’ to spell $ucce$$ in the socioeconomic culture that he exists in; it’s almost inevitable that he’d end up like this.
Roofman finds writer/director Derek Cianfrance at his most accessible and humorous, with Channing Tatum’s adorkable lead performance anchoring the film’s look at both a stranger-than-fiction crime story and the personal and societal factors that created it. The script from Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn presents social and fiscal anxiety with equal impact, and as much as the connective ideas are characteristically downbeat and melancholic, the organic delivery and sense of humour make it a remarkably breezy viewing.
It’s a film that aims to humanise the kind of weirdo-of-the-moment tabloid events like the real-life Roofman, giving those that are often laughed at a chance to be laughed with.
