Roofman: Movie Review

Cast: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Peter Dinklage, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple
Director: Derek Cianfrance

If you're looking for a comedy vehicle about a man who breaks out of prison and spends days evading capture by hiding out in a local Toys'R'Us, then Roofman is not the film for you.

More a character study that's led by a wonderfully empathetic Tatum and Dunst double act, this feels like a mesh of The Place Beyond The Pines' social drama with a relationship drama that's heading for tragedy.

Tatum plays former special forces soldier Jeffrey Manchester, a man whose skill set lies in "seeing what other people don't see", and which leads him to breaking into a series of McDonald's via the roof, fuelled by the fact he can't provide for his daughter. However, despite being a decent guy - in that he offers those he's stuffing into a chiller his coat - Manchester gets caught after lavishing his daughter with a big birthday and the present he couldn't give her.

Inevitably though, Manchester escapes from jail (one of the film's more lowkey stakes scenes) and ends up on the run, taking shelter in the local toy store run by Peter Dinklage's mean boss Mitch. However, yearning to be part of a life, he ends up dating one of the store's employees Leigh (Dunst)...

Roofman makes good fist of Tatum's skill for understated acting. From just minor subtle twitches from his character to riffing on Risky Business inside the store, it's a gamut of a performance that makes up for some of where the script lacks. Asking us to believe he'd just abandon his daughter after laying the groundwork early on seems mean, and those around Manchester's orbit - with the exception of Dunst's Leigh - all feel like stereotyped character rather than fully-fledged individuals.

But there's a charm to Tatum as Manchester that helps you paper over the plot holes, and while Cianfrance isn't really interested in doing anything flashy with the script or his direction of this 2004-set story, the grounded film has a way of putting some meat on the bones of this, making it more affecting than you'd expect.

It may be a true story (according to the opening credits), and there may be issues with this antagonist making poor choices all along the way, but Roofman makes great fist of its misguided lead and Tatum seizes on what's expected, delivering more than what the script wants of him - and even providing one of the year's most stark visuals, a naked man scrambling over shelves and walls to escape.

Thanks to empathy and subtlety, Roofman succeeds more than it fails - and once again shows that Tatum remains one of the most underappreciated stars of our time.