‘Roofman’ Review: Channing Tatum Charms but Derek Cianfrance’s Eccentric True Crime Dramedy Puts Too Much Stock in the Fables of Its Subject [C+] TIFF

During the end credits of Roofman, a series of news clips and interviews of people who came into contact with the notorious “Roofman” robber are presented. The Roofman was Jeffrey Manchester, a thief who focused his operations on fast food restaurants, mostly McDonald’s. He would rigorously plan his heist, which always revolved around the entry method that afforded him his moniker — cutting a hole in the roof and dropping in to forcibly retrieve the store’s money, often locking up employees in areas like the walk-in freezer while he conducted his procedure. But the clips in the credits are of people all saying the same thing: Jeffrey Manchester was always perfectly polite with them, even if he was in the midst of a robbery. Those who met him and didn’t know he was a criminal could never imagine that he was a man on the run. Those who faced him during one of his stickups couldn’t believe that they were being treated so well while under the threat of being shot. 

Director and co-writer (with Kirt Gunn) Derek Cianfrance follows the lead of these clips in crafting his dramatization of Manchester’s crime spree. He’s a troubled man with a heart of gold, played with golden retriever charm by Channing Tatum, desperate for any opportunity to support the daughter he has with his ex-wife. To empathize with this man, we need the context that this is for reasons pure of heart — that the events that eventually lead Jeffrey to his most infamous stunt of living inside a Toys ‘R Us for months while evading the cops after escaping prison are out of earnestness and necessity. It’s the only way for Roofman to sell its sentimental vibe.

But those clips aren’t the whole story, just as Roofman isn’t the entire picture of Jeffrey Manchester. It’s possible to empathize with his personal dilemma, perhaps only because he makes it so easy from the various accounts of his civility while taking wage workers under siege. A better movie would more successfully find that identifiable angle to him as a person and more pertinently exhibit the incongruity of his courtesy and the fact that he operated by putting innocent people under duress.

Roofman doesn’t do that. It tells a straightforward, light-hearted, eccentric, and lightly funny crime story about a guy whose mistakes have spiraled out of control, but who has an identifiable goodness and humanity about him, and who the film goes to great lengths to put in your emotional corner. By the time we are actually asked to contrast the reality of his actions against his benevolent demeanor, the film has already put far too much work into establishing a heartfelt tone of sincerity. 

In a vacuum, there’s a lot about Roofman that exudes a degree of charm, namely Tatum’s performance as Manchester. When he’s not trying to pull off a job as agreeable as possible, he’s offering up those approachable gazes and bantering with the supporting cast as he tries to maintain a low profile. When he sets up shop in the Toys ‘R Us, there are scenes of him trying to keep out of sight of the security cameras while obtaining M&Ms, and a pop music-set montage of him dancing around the store. Some of it is broad and sappy, but Tatum anchors the film in his reliability as an unexpected everyman, even while stuck with trite voice-over narration. 

The supporting cast is solid as well. Kirsten Dunst is Leigh Wainscott, the church-going single mother to two daughters, whom Jeffrey finds himself romancing after donating toys to her church, in another example of his charitability, spurred by overhearing a conversation between her and her boss, Mitch, played by Peter Dinklage in a believable performance as an unsympathetic manager. Jeffrey is also associated with a fellow veteran and quiet crook, Steve (Lakeith Stanfield), who runs a hustle getting passports for shady people, and constantly has to reiterate to Jeffrey that he’s not being careful enough about covering his tracks. It’s true, and perhaps the most compelling element of the film: Jeffrey is actively bad at being a criminal despite his success in squatting within a big box store for months on end, constantly making himself visible to private eyes and ingraining himself within a community while living as an actively wanted man. He refuses to disregard his emotional yearning, and it makes for sloppy work that leads to him getting caught in deeper traps of his own making. 

But so much of the Jeffrey in the film is based on invented or assumed traits. Not only that, but some of the changes that occur in the transition from real life to the screen make the scenario actively more disconcerting. Leigh Wainscott didn’t actually work at the Toys ‘R Us where Jeffrey set up shop — he met her through other means. Here, he spies on her from the security cameras, watching her struggle to get through to her boss and wanting to spend more time with her family, and acts as her invisible guardian angel by changing her work schedule, among other invisible favors. Then he begins courting her, having learned all about her in secret. The most obvious word to describe the scenario is creepy, but it’s sold with heartwarming warmth. 

The film, in general, is a bit of a tonal shift for Cianfrance, who thus far has run the dramatic spectrum from turbulent Cassavetes-inspired romance (Blue Valentine) to a more novelistic and somber flavor of crime drama (The Place Beyond the Pines). To his credit, he wields this story with confidence and gives it an innate watchability. Cinematographer Andrij Parekh, either shooting on film or putting a convincing grain filter on his images, captures vivid on-location work of the North Carolina locale. Production designer Inbal Weinberg and set decorator Kendall Anderson also deserve shout-outs for their faithful recreations of the department stores and fast food restaurants as they looked in the early 2000s, with a fully period-accurate McDonald’s opening the movie, and the Toys ‘R Us existing in the first place, but also featuring 20-year-old branding and products — at one point, an exacerbated Jeffrey brutalizes a shelf of Tickle Me Elmos.

There’s care put into the bones of Roofman, but it features a script too indifferent about the troubling contradictions of its central character. A sympathetic crook isn’t an unusual prospect for a movie, but the way Roofman tangles up fiction and real life, crafting an idealized version of a man whose geniality is the mythologized talk of people he conned, makes for a story with confused and uncomfortable sympathies. The Jeffrey Manchester of Roofman is a flawed sweetheart. The Jeffrey Manchester that is currently in prison is too much of an enigma for this movie to probe properly.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival where Roofman had its world premiere. Paramount Pictures will release the film theatrically in the U.S. on October 10.