If there ever was a male version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, it would be Channing Tatum. A golden retriever in human form, Tatum has built a career out of playing lovable disasters who are as destructive as they are charming.
That streak remains unbroken in Derek Cianfrance's Roofman, a retelling of a true story about a terrible person whom the film wants us to love because they're hot and a little bit dangerous. In all fairness to the cast, especially Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, they pull off a good show. Viewed in a bubble, these are all charming and fun characters to be around. If it wasn't for all that abuse, terror, and lying, it would be easy to root for them.
But it's in blending fact with fiction that Roofman stumbles hard. Tatum plays Jeffrey Manchester, a real armed robber who took hostages and terrorized local neighborhoods by holding up McDonald's restaurants by gunpoint.
Watching the film, you'd think it was all sunshine and giggles. After all, Jeffrey looks and behaves like Channing Tatum. How could you be angry at that face? Every act of violence, betryal, and abuse is met with a grin and a shrug, and not once does the film make a point about our tolerance for horrific behavior based on looks or star power.
The film has to starts, one when we meet Jeffrey for the first time, and another when he escapes his first long prison sentence to start life anew. He ends up hiding in a Toys'R'Us, showering in the public toilet and existing off candy and video games like he was in college. Tatum excels at these parts, once again leaning into the anarchic energy of eternal arrested development, and there's fun to be had in the fantasy of doing what you want in a closed department store.
It's when he falls in love with Leigh Wainscot (Kirsten Dunst) that things go off the rails. He monitors her through hidden cameras he's placed around the store, listening in on her private conversations and messing with the work schedules when her boss (Peter Dinklage in a weirdly mean bit part) refuses to help her. The whole thing is played off as a cute puppy dog crush, and Cianfrance never lets us fully grasp on how immensely creepy it all is.
Before we know it, Jeffrey – now calling himself John – is in Leigh's life, buying their love with the things he stole, all while lying to them about who and what he is. Cianfrance builds this part as a race against time as Jeffrey waits for his former brother in arms (Lakeith Stanfield) to return from Iraq to make him a new identity. It's never about the expectation that Jeffrey will come clean, only when will he be able to escape with his new family.
But Jeffrey already has another family from his time before prison. They're given a single moment where he calls them after his escape, only for his ex-wife to snippily tell him they've moved on. It's a weird blank cheque for the audience to accept that Jeffrey is a-OK to pursue another franchising opportunity.
There's a darker, more solemn film underneath all of this. A more nuanced exploration of how America treats its veterans, especially those like Jeffrey – whom the film presents as not being all there. Singular moments even flirt with the notion that perhaps there is redemption in community and that past mistakes can be absolved over time, given the right nurture and guidance. There might even be a working satire somewhere here, suggesting that America, a land built on the expansion and escape, can warrant a second chance for the right price.
And yet, none of that manifests. Instead, Roofman remains wholly inconclusive in what it wants to say. It knows that it's got a winning pair in Tatum and Dunst, who are all smiles and charm, and look great together. For a moment, you want them to be happy because that's the expectation. For his part, Tatum does some fine work balancing Jeffrey's desire to make people love him with the innate fear that any minute now his time will run out. Watch how he plays every moment like he's got his head on a swivel; even when he's relaxed, he's ready to bolt.
It's just frustrating that even at the end, where the film reveals just how much of the story actually happened, it never feels like it's taking any of this seriously. Every act, no matter how devastating, is like a small victory. As if, ultimately, all this was a victory lap for the guy who never gave enough of a shit over anyone else to ask was any of this worth it.
