Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) is the “Roofman” burglar. After being sentenced to decades in prison for robbing multiple McDonald’s stores Jeffrey escapes prison and hides out in a Toys R Us store. Only to find himself falling in love with a member of staff named Leigh (Kirsten Dunst). 

Roofman is an extraordinary based on true story film that manages to be a lot of fun whilst maintaining its grit. It is so outlandish that the credits are filled with real interviews from those impacted by the real events just to prove life is stranger than fiction. 

The broad strokes are that Manchester is a retired army veteran down on his luck and on the verge of losing his wife and kids. That is until he goes on a crime spree of robbing a slew of fast food restaurants by hacking through their roofs and waiting for management to walk in at the beginning of the day and open their safes. Being able to provide for his family is only temporary until the law catches up with him and he finds himself in prison. His extraordinary observation skills provide him a way out and he then chooses to hide inside a Toys R Us store for months as he waits for a friend to provide him with fake identification to escape the country. 

It is the mixture of leading man Channing Tatum and co-writer/director Derek Cianfrance that gives the film its heady mix of fun and grit. Tatum plays Manchester with gleeful abandon. Forever positive and childlike he unlocks peoples defences and makes friends easily. He just also happens to be making a lot of bad decisions that are pretty reprehensible when looked at in the cold light of day. Cianfrance on the other hand, in only his fourth feature film in fifteen years (if you exclude his lost 1998 debut) is responsible for the likes of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond The Pines and is used to a darker edge. The result feels somewhat like a Richard Linklater film. Something that feels down to earth and realistic but with a whimsical and charming undertone. 

Watching Tatum using the Toys R Us as his personal play zone is inordinately fun and his ability to charm and disarm those around him even when he is put on the back foot makes his character hugely likeable. Tatum has always shown huge comedic ability in his other films and this feels like a perfect blend of comedy and drama to show his abilities as an actor. Stealing the film from under him though is Kirsten Dunst as the single mother of two Leigh who falls hard for this grifter. She manages to portray Leigh as both a supremely charitable church goer and a determined and brave single mother who is prepared to stand up to her curmudgeon of a boss. Speaking of which, Peter Dinklage is brilliantly funny as the Toys R Us store manager who only cares about the bottom line. Cianfrance even has time to give Pines alumni Ben Mendelsohn and Emery Cohen small parts as a pastor and Toys R Us employee. 

Roofman is lots of fun and well worth watching. My main hope is that it fires up Cianfrance’s creative juices to write and direct more features as he is a real talent.