{"id":10042444,"date":"2025-10-07T10:16:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10042444"},"modified":"2025-10-07T10:16:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:16:21","slug":"roofman-review-channing-tatum-steals-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/10\/07\/roofman-review-channing-tatum-steals-hearts\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Roofman’ Review: Channing Tatum steals hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s Note<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0This review originally ran as part of our coverage of the\u00a02025\u00a0Toronto International Film Festival<\/a>,\u00a0and today we\u2019re re-publishing it with the film\u2019s wider release.\u00a0Check out\u00a0our extensive review slate from TIFF50<\/a>, revisit\u00a0our official curtain-raiser<\/a>, and check the\u00a0complete Vanyaland coverage archives<\/a>\u00a0from prior editions.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave it to Channing Tatum to prove that people actually live in the city of Charlotte \u2013 it really isn\u2019t just banks and struggling sports franchises! I say that with plenty of love, as a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred, and that\u2019s why Derek Cianfrance\u2019s Roofman<\/em><\/strong> hit as well as it did for me. I think there\u2019s a broader appeal than just folks with a blood feud with a neighbor over the Carolina\/Duke rivalry, but color me impressed. As a work of NC-centric media, Cianfrance\u2019s first theatrical feature in nearly a decade is probably the best since Eastbound and Down<\/em> left the airwaves, and is of a similar mindset as the average Green-Hill-McBride feature, if it\u2019s a little tamer in content. It\u2019s also a radical departure from the director\u2019s established tone, similar to how David Gordon Green cheered up with Pineapple Express<\/em> following years of Malick-like cinema with fewer stylistic concessions and less flippancy (and don\u2019t worry: Ryan Gosling\u2019s not even in this one, and that means he won\u2019t die in the first third and leave you mad as hell at the advertising). But it\u2019s the way it uses the rich tableau of life past the Piedmont that makes Roofman<\/em> stand out among a festival slate strewn with true-crime tales, and the remarkable empathy and gentleness it has for its characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could use those words \u2013 gentle, empathetic — to describe Jeffery Manchester (Tatum), who is the type of gold-hearted, irresponsible person who so desperately wants responsibility that they\u2019ll go to remarkably complex means to attain it. He feels like a disappointment, given that his military career has come to an end, his marriage hasn\u2019t worked out, and he can\u2019t seem to find stable work. He can\u2019t ignore the disappointment on his young daughter\u2019s face when she opens a birthday gift and discovers it’s not the bike she\u2019s hoped for, but hand-me-down toys from his childhood. That day, his friend and fellow veteran, Steve (Lakeith Stanfield), points something out to him: Jeffery has a real knack for remembering details, possesses an incredible sense of creativity and invention, and the patience and follow-through to see a job to its conclusion. You can practically see the lightbulb flash on in his head at that moment, realizing that his path to Easy Street is more of a drop-down through a McDonald\u2019s roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of the next few years, he knocks over 45<\/em> fast food restaurants and would presumably have gotten away with more had he not botched one last job in the goofiest fashion possible. He\u2019s been hauled off, away from his three kids and the beautiful house he built with his hamburger heists, right in the middle of his daughter\u2019s birthday party, just as she finally<\/em> got her bike. Even though he\u2019s only convicted for one of the robberies (and acquits himself in the court of public opinion by just how nice<\/em> he was to the employees following the botch), the judge throws the book at him. Full sentences for each of the three kidnapping counts, adding up to a quarter century behind bars in the NC Department of Corrections. Yet you can\u2019t keep a guy like Jeffery down, and one day, he escapes from prison with a bit of help from some plywood and a box truck driver with a small bladder. He knows he\u2019s only got a few options \u2013 everyone\u2019s searching for him, and there\u2019s no way in hell he can go back to his family, especially given that his ex-wife\u2019s got a new man and is demanding they go no-contact \u2013 but even he couldn\u2019t imagine that he\u2019d wind up living behind a false wall in a Toys-R-Us for the next six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where Roofman<\/em> stops being merely a pretty fun picture and becomes something conceptually intriguing. Jeffery is quite literally in a state of perpetual adolescence, surrounded by the trappings of modern American childhood, and he absolutely <\/em>indulges in it as soon as he figures out how to stop the security cameras from recording the live feeds. He eats baby food and Peanut M&Ms in the break room and wanders the aisles at night, riding the bikes from the display he lives behind, taking batting practice on the roof. It\u2019s all supposed to be temporary \u2013 he finds out that Steve, who works on the more rough-and-tumble side of immigration and would be able to help him flee the country, signed up for a six-month tour of Afghanistan, so the soonest he\u2019ll get out of there is December 1 \u2013 but he can\u2019t help but get himself involved in the life of the store, observed through a series of baby monitor camera he\u2019s installed. It\u2019s there that he sees Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a single mother of two who works there, begging her shitty boss (Peter Dinklage, who has an amazing scene involving a dye pack) for a better schedule so that she can have more time for her young girls. What begins as some minor schedule manipulation on Jeffery\u2019s part slowly turns into a romance, and Jeffery stops being careful. He\u2019s just not built for the criminal life after all, but it\u2019s not like he knows anything else, and soon enough, the law might catch up with him.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So much of this film lies upon Tatum\u2019s broad shoulders, and he amply carries the weight. He\u2019s just so goddamned effervescent <\/em>that he\u2019s effortlessly believable in the role, and that you\u2019ll want him to get away with everything \u2013 up to a point \u2013 just so he can keep on being a step-dad to Leigh\u2019s daughters, with whom he forms a natural bond. That\u2019s his thing, whether it\u2019s charming Dunst\u2019s character (and they\u2019re a truly compelling match on-screen), her pastor (Ben Mendelsohn, showing off his pipes), or her church\u2019s singles club (of which he becomes \u2013 for a single day \u2013 the only male member), he never hits a false note. Tatum\u2019s an absurdly earnest performer, with a weaponized charisma that somehow isn\u2019t just bullshit flattery, and he manages to draw the viewer in so close that, when he does act out of character at a pivotal moment in the third act, it fucking hurts to watch. Better, you keenly get the feeling of how deeply disappointed he is in his betrayal of his values, which carries all the way through until the film\u2019s epilogue. It\u2019s a magnetic, magnificent performance, one that, when paired with the Magic Mike <\/em>movies, cements Tatum\u2019s representation as the understated King of the South on screen. Long may he reign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a less self-aggrandizing Kenny Powers with more golden retriever instincts, Cianfrance and Tatum have used the real Jeffery Manchester\u2019s story to create a character who is almost instantly<\/em> recognizable to people down South. I don\u2019t mean to suggest that folks all over the country won\u2019t relate \u2013 they sure as hell did in Canada based on the laughs and gasps and such \u2013 but I know I went to high school with guys like this. They\u2019re warm-hearted dudes who just can\u2019t seem to ever get their shit together, and though most of them never descend this deep into crime and adolescent escapism, they so desperately want to cut from A to D without going through B and C. What makes them distinctly Southern beyond the accent or the North Carolina plates is the exaggerated way that they try to make that leap and the extent to which they go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These guys are the protagonists of tales told at Fourth of July barbecues, and Roofman<\/em> is sort of what it would look like if they always lived up to the ideal. What unites it with the Hill-Green sensibility is how seriously it takes their character, not their actions \u2013 there\u2019s real shit inside Kenny Fuckin\u2019 Powers, and there\u2019s real soul within Tatum here \u2013 and how it extends that to everyone in the small community that makes up the film\u2019s core. It felt like seeing old friends again, at least to me, but I think most will find that Roofman<\/em> is a rare pleasure: A big-hearted true crime picture with legitimate depth and soul. Oh, and humor. Man. What a hoot.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0This review originally ran as part of our coverage of the\u00a02025\u00a0Toronto International Film Festival,\u00a0and today we\u2019re re-publishing it with the film\u2019s wider release.\u00a0Check out\u00a0our extensive review slate from TIFF50, revisit\u00a0our official curtain-raiser, and check the\u00a0complete Vanyaland coverage archives\u00a0from prior editions. Leave it to Channing Tatum to prove that people actually live in the city of Charlotte \u2013 it really isn\u2019t just banks and struggling sports franchises! I say that with plenty of love, as a Tar Heel born and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10042325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[11629,26409,35757,21709,35815,35855],"class_list":["post-10042444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-channing-tatum","tag-header","tag-roofman","tag-tiff","tag-tiff-2025","tag-tiff50"],"yoast_head":"\n'Roofman' Review: Channing Tatum steals hearts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"'Roofman'\u00a0is a rare pleasure: A big-hearted true crime picture with legitimate depth and soul. Oh, and humor. 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