Roofman

From 2010 to 2013, Derek Cianfrance was one of the best directors working in Hollywood. If we limit ourselves to those four years, Cianfrance’s output compares to anyone other than Martin Scorsese and David O. Russell. Cianfrance was better than Spielberg and more or less on par with Fincher, Tarantino, Nolan, and any other filmmaker you can name. Admittedly, this was a brief moment in time, during which Cianfrance gave us two movies: the authentic and heartbreaking romance Blue Valentine and the even better generational drama The Place Beyond the Pines.

There was every reason to believe that this was the start of an epic filmmaking career. These were essentially Cianfrance’s first two features and he was still in his thirties. His next film, 2016’s period lighthouse romantic drama The Light Between the Oceans, was picturesque but quickly forgotten and Cianfrance hasn’t made a movie since then. While he did co-write and direct the excellent 2020 HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True starring Mark Ruffalo as identical twins and picked up a story credit on the Oscar-nominated Sound of Metal the same year, Cianfrance returns to full feature filmmaking on Roofman, a film that seems timed to awards season but is opening wide and with the robust backing of Paramount Pictures.

The approach seems reminiscent of The Smashing Machine, the A24 drama that opened wide last week whose long-brewing Dwayne Johnson Oscar buzz was quickly quieted by widespread reports of its box office disappointment. Roofman, which similarly carries an R rating and is based on a true story taking place around the turn-of-the-millennium, could be in for a similar fate, but it’s a more accessible, enjoyable, and story-driven tale as presented by Cianfrance and his co-writer Kirt Gunn.

Channing Tatum plays Jeffrey Manchester, an intelligent and resourceful but financially struggling father who gets sentenced to 45 years in prison for robbing 45 McDonald’s restaurants in the late 1990s. Jeffrey is trying to provide for his four young daughters and he does for a while, always drilling a hole in the fast food giant’s roof, climbing down, and making off with the money. Early into his long sentence, he sneaks out underneath an 18-wheeler and eludes authorities by settling down in a most unlikely place: inside a Toys R Us.

Jeffrey makes a home in an enclosed and hidden area behind a bike display, finding everything he needs right there on the retail giant’s shelves: clothes, shoes, baby food, Peanut M & Ms. It is a charming premise, presented with the levity it would seem to warrant. Our sympathies are with Jeff as he hacks into the store’s security cameras and reprograms them not to record, sets up baby monitors to do his own surveillance of the store and its miserly boss (Peter Dinklage), and takes an interest in Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), an employee and single mother of two. Donating to the toy drive at Leigh’s church gets Jeff effortlessly noticed by his crush, who asks him out after ascertaining that he’s awkward, but not gay.

At this point, Roofman has the unenviable task of selling us on a romance between a hardworking mother and a charming ex-con who lies that he’s doing classified government work when in reality his only source of income is pawning video games he’s stolen from his kid-friendly secret home. Need I remind you that this is based on a true story?

Cianfrance and Gunn surprisingly do not pull many punches, finding the humor and humanity in the details and personalities of the messy true story instead of trying to rewrite them to fit convention. The film does about as good a job as it can without taking extreme creative license, keeping us compelled, invested, and uneasy in trying to figure out how Jeff’s empowering new life with Leigh and her daughters can work while he remains an unhoused fugitive with a trail of lies.

Tatum and Dunst both do a good job of making us buy in. I am always amazed that the actor I first discovered as the one-note leading man of Step Up is not only still working but more or less an A-list fixture nearly two decades later. But kudos to him for actually working with talented filmmakers (Cianfrance joins the likes of Steven Soderbergh and the Coen Brothers), lending his star power to interesting stories, and actually developing some credible chops. Roofman is kind of like a return to Foxcatcher via the tone of Logan Lucky and I mean that in the best way.

Dunst is another well-deserved Hollywood success story. She has been filling major roles in big movies for three-quarters of her life and continues to elevate them with her potent and nuanced performances. Her last three films — The Power of the Dog, Civil War, and this — have already made this decade more eventful for her than the one before it. If there is justice, her fine work in these should persuade Hollywood to continue ignoring the outdated wisdom of not casting actresses past the age of 40.

Cianfrance consistently draws strong performances from actors and that extends to the supporting cast, which includes the aforementioned Dinklage as well as LaKeith Stanfield, stand-up comic Jimmy O. Yang, and, reuniting with their Place Beyond the Pines auteur, Ben Mendelsohn and Emory Cohen.

While Roofman does not reach the same heights as the dynamite one-two punch with which Cianfrance began the 2010s, it consistently diverts and subverts as a true crime film you would not immediately classify as such. It probably won’t win awards and it may well falter commercially, but I hope the director had as much fun as he seems to here and that we don’t have to wait another nine years for him to make another film.

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