Roofman

There is a specific kind of American madness that involves robbing a McDonald’s, but it takes a truly singular spirit to decide that the best place to hide from the FBI is inside a Toys “R” Us. Roofman is the kind of story that feels like it was cooked up in a fever dream after someone spent too much time reading Florida Man headlines, but because it’s based on the real-life exploits of Jeffrey Manchester, it carries a weight that pure fiction usually fumbles. I watched this while wearing a pair of old wool socks that had a hole in the big toe, and honestly, feeling that draft while watching Channing Tatum saw through a ceiling made the whole experience feel strangely immersive.

The Puppy Dog with a Power Tool

We’ve seen Channing Tatum play the charismatic hunk and the bumbling comedic foil, but here, under the direction of Derek Cianfrance, he hits a frequency I didn't know he possessed. As Jeffrey Manchester, an Army Ranger turned serial "Roofman," Tatum manages to be both physically imposing and deeply, almost pathetically, sweet. He’s got this "puppy dog with a power tool" energy that makes you forget he’s technically a menace to society. When he’s living in the Toys “R” Us—setting up a secret apartment behind the bikes and exercise equipment—he doesn't look like a master criminal. Instead, he looks like a man who has been emotionally compromised by a Happy Meal.

The film leans into the absurdity of his domesticity within a corporate retail space. There’s a scene where he’s meticulously organizing his "home" among the aisles that reminded me of the survivalist grit of The Place Beyond the Pines (another Cianfrance joint), but filtered through a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s a delicate tonal tightrope. In the wrong hands, this would be a broad farce, but Cianfrance treats Manchester’s delusions with a startling amount of dignity.

Blue Valentine at the Food Court

The movie shifts gears when Kirsten Dunst enters the frame as Leigh Wainscott. If you’re a fan of Dunst from her work in Civil War or The Power of the Dog, you know she’s currently the reigning queen of internalizing grief until it vibrates off the screen. Here, she plays a divorced mom who falls for Manchester’s "nice guy" routine, unaware that her boyfriend is the guy the news is calling a rooftop bandit.

Their chemistry is the soul of the film. It’s not the flashy, Hollywood-style romance; it’s the weary, "we’ve both been through the wringer" kind of love that feels earned. Dunst brings a groundedness that prevents the movie from floating off into the stratosphere of its own quirkiness. When the secret starts to unravel, the tension isn't about whether he’ll get caught—we know he will—it’s about the devastating realization that Leigh has finally found a "good man" who happens to be a total fabrication. It’s some of the best work I’ve seen from Dunst in years, proving she can still find the heartbeat in a character who could have easily been a one-dimensional victim of deception.

Nostalgia as a Hideout

In our current era of cinema, where every other movie is a "legacy sequel" or a hollow brand exercise, Roofman uses its setting for something much more interesting than simple nostalgia bait. Setting a heist-drama-rom-com hybrid in a Toys “R” Us—a store that essentially died in the real world and was resurrected as a ghost of its former self—adds a layer of unintentional tragedy. To Manchester, the store is a sanctuary; to the audience in 2025, it’s a relic of a pre-Amazon landscape that feels just as lost as he is.

Ben Mendelsohn pops up as Pastor Ron, and as usual, he steals every scene he’s in by just breathing. He has this way of looking at Channing Tatum that suggests he can see right through the Army Ranger bravado and into the hollow center of a man who just wants a family. The supporting cast, including LaKeith Stanfield and Juno Temple, keep the world feeling lived-in, even when the plot moves into the territory of a cat-and-mouse thriller. The cinematography by Andrij Parekh captures the fluorescent loneliness of late-night retail in a way that made me want to go buy a LEGO set and cry.

Interestingly, Derek Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn wrote the screenplay with a focus on "terrible decisions," and the film never lets Manchester off the hook. It’s a drama about the lies we tell ourselves to survive, wrapped in the packaging of a heist movie. While the $18 million budget is modest by modern standards, every cent is on the screen, mostly in the form of authentic 2000s-era set dressing that made me miss a time when you could actually walk into a store and buy a physical copy of a movie.

Roofman is a rare bird in the 2020s: an original, mid-budget adult drama that doesn't feel like it was written by an algorithm. It manages to be funny without being a "comedy" and heartbreaking without being a "tragedy." By the time the credits rolled, I wasn't thinking about the box office numbers or the streaming windows; I was just thinking about how hard it is to be a person, and how much easier it must feel to just hide behind a wall of stuffed giraffes. It’s a weird, wonderful, and deeply human film that deserves a spot on your "must-see" list before it disappears into the digital ether.