There’s an uncomfortable portrait of masculinity trapped inside Roofman, but the movie is a little too enamored of its main character to let it out. The reason why is right there in the opening scene after a note about how what follows is a true story. Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) breaks into a roadside McDonald’s through the roof, his preferred means of entry, and one that will earn him his nickname from the press. When the morning shift arrives to open, he’s there to greet them wearing a balaclava and holding a rifle, assuring them he means them no harm. Jeffrey, you see, is the polite robber, leading his hostages in a chipper chorus of “Good morning!” like a demented kindergarten teacher then making sure they put on their coats before he locks them in the walk-in freezer. (When the manager, played by Tony Revolori, reveals that he neglected to bring outerwear, Jeffrey strips off his own jacket so the guy isn’t left shivering in the cold.) Being solicitous may not be the most meaningful distinction to the people being confronted with the possibility of dying during the course of their minimum-wage jobs, but it’s important to Jeffrey, who sees himself as doing what he has to do to provide for his family. The question in Roofman is how much the movie itself buys into its importance.
For director Derek Cianfrance, poet laureate of mournful portrayals of valiantly misguided husbands and fathers in films like The Place Beyond the Pines and Blue Valentine, something resonates in this story about a guy who’s more focused on being able to buy his kid a bike and a house with a pool than he is on actually being around for her. But Roofman, which Cianfrance also co-wrote, was clearly intended to be lighter fare and instead ends up in this dissonant in-between space tonally. Take the scene, early on, in which Jeffrey finally gets caught after 45 jobs, with the police arriving at his home during his daughter’s birthday party. It strives for laughs, with Jeffrey scurrying like a Looney Tunes figure through the suburban streets and across various backyards. But it also shows him getting arrested in front of his little girl, hurled to the ground and humiliated while she looks on with wide eyes. Cianfrance refuses to treat the other people in Jeffrey’s life like mere collateral in his outsize adventures. At the same time, the film still mostly exists within Jeffrey’s mindset, emphasized by his occasional voice-over, and he believes he’s a nice guy doing his best with the skills that he has while really trying not to harm anyone.
Tatum, accordingly, approaches Jeffrey as the latest of the sweet-natured himbos he’s specialized in for most of his career. As Jeffrey’s friend and fellow Army vet Steve (an amusing LaKeith Stanfield) puts it, Jeffrey is the smartest dumb guy he’s ever met — brilliant when it comes to spatial awareness and understanding how systems work, and utterly unsavvy and oblivious about how he moves through the world. Jeffrey’s able to escape from prison but can’t help but swing by his old house to stare weepingly at his daughter as though he could somehow just rejoin that life (Tatum does a lot of single-tear solemnity). And when he finds a place to lay low for a while in a Charlotte Toys ’R’ Us, disabling the security cameras and setting up camp behind a display, he makes the outrageous decision to strike up a relationship with one of the employees he’s been surveilling. He doesn’t just woo Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a divorced mother of two who’s bemused but receptive when a handsome stranger turns up at her church with an armful of donations for her toy drive. He insists on meeting her daughters (Lily Collias and Kennedy Moyer), launching a charm offensive that overcomes any doubts the three women might have about this man who claims to be in town on a classified government job and who can’t reveal where he lives.
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Roofman isn’t unaware of the potential creepiness of everything Jeffrey is doing, love-bombing a family and sidling his way deep into their lives when there’s no way he could have a future with them. But it nevertheless paints this romance as heartfelt, in the same way that it treats Jeffrey’s investment in the other store employees (played by Peter Dinklage and Emory Cohen) as sincere despite his spying on them with strategically deployed baby monitors. Roofman is simply too odd a bird, a movie that sets out to be a romp but can’t bring itself to smooth over the rougher aspects of its material, especially in terms of its main character’s addiction to showing off with gifts or flashes of cash. Jeffrey’s self-proclaimed niceness has a lot to do with playing the hero and very little with giving thought to how his actions will affect the women whose trust and vulnerability he takes such pains to earn. He’s a nice guy all the way through lying to children and actually engaging in violence while taking on one last job, as though the image he’s built up in his head about what manhood entails blocks out any sight of the people he would describe it as being in service to.
The film’s greatest feat isn’t its wobbly characterizations, but its setting — the stretches of strip malls and chain businesses that make up most of America but rarely get showcased onscreen so thoughtfully. Cianfrance doesn’t just revel in this unpretty landscape, he shows the ways that community can flourish in its anonymous confines. The sympathy Roofman extends toward the break room of its big-box stores and the low-ceilinged place of worship where Leigh sings in the choir every Sunday is more moving than its treatment of its protagonist, offering an appreciation that these places could be anywhere and at the same time are highly specific.
