Channing Tatum goes on a McDonalds robbing spree and hides in a Toys “R” Us in Derek Cianfrance’s sweet holiday crime comedy. Here’s our Roofman review. “This is a true story.” In the wake of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer fiasco, it takes a certain chutzpah to start a film as definitively as Roofman. Derek Cianfrance – ... Roofman review | You’ll believe a man can hide (in a Toys “R” US)
Channing Tatum goes on a McDonalds robbing spree and hides in a Toys “R” Us in Derek Cianfrance’s sweet holiday crime comedy. Here’s our Roofman review.
“This is a true story.”
In the wake of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer fiasco, it takes a certain chutzpah to start a film as definitively as Roofman. Derek Cianfrance – the writer-director best known for his hardly-laugh-a-minute crime drama, The Place Beyond The Pines – is so confident in the legal unambiguity of his film he even ends his five-word mission statement with a full-stop. There’s no movie magic to be found here, the title card says; everything we’re about to describe is pretty much movie-shaped already.
The unbelievably true story of Jeffrey Manchester – a former US Army Reserve soldier who broke into around 40 McDonald’s stores via the roof, escaped from prison and spent six months living undetected in a Toys “R” Us – has been begging for a big screen retelling since the 2000s.
With a protagonist universally recognised as a genuinely nice guy, the biggest problem faced by Cianfrance in finally taking the plunge is convincing us this isn’t all too good to be true. Did Manchester really make sure his victims put on their coats before he locked them in a walk-in-freezer? Did he join a local Presbyterian Church, bringing the kids toys pilfered from his new home, and explain away his mysterious living situation by pretending to work for local intelligence services?
It turns out the answer to all these questions is a yes – and Cianfrance has an awful lot of fun convincing us so.
Roofman is a complete about turn from the tone of the director’s previous films, but he’s clearly lost none of his knack for cinematic storytelling. The tonal tightrope he has to walk here should be more-or-less impossible; comedic without edging into the ridiculous, thrilling without feeling constructed, and crafting a real, loveable hero without glamorising holding up fast food employees with a rifle.
The result is a comedy-crime-thriller which somehow manages to pull off all three genres with aplomb, and often at the same time, and looking completely effortless as it does so.
Cianfrance is helped in this by a stellar cast – brought together by his prestige filmmaking credentials to make a light-hearted, proper film-on-film comedy caper with the level of craft now normally reserved for glossy limited series or studio awards bids. Kirsten Dunst is absurdly charming as Manchester’s single-mum love interest, Leigh; Ben Mendelsohn pops in for a brief and scene-stealing turn as an eccentric church pastor; Peter Dinklage is brilliantly grumpy as a certain toy store’s Scrooge-like manager.
Leading them all is a rarely better Channing Tatum in a role perfectly tailored to his talents. Warm-hearted and surprisingly competent, his puppy-dog charisma turns what could easily have been a slightly creepy man-child into the loveable rogue the script needs him to be.
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But despite the lightness of its tone, there’s a realness and melancholy to Roofman that elevates what sounds like prime straight-to-streaming fodder into something special.
Cinematographer Andrij Parekh’s choice to shoot on 35mm, for a start, hints at a level of craft and aestheticism often banished from mainstream studio filmmaking, and it hints at a project committed to tangibility and relatability at every turn.
Make this film in 1991 and Manchester would be robbing a noncommittal “Happy Meats” chain and hiding in an off-brand toy conglomerate. In 2025, though, our unlikely hero is presented as a grain of sand in the very real landscape of corporate America. Like 2023’s Dumb Money, there’s a weight to framing a ridiculous story in a world so easily recognisable as our own.
Neither of Manchester’s industrial victims come out of Roofman all that badly; for the most part, their influence is limited to a series of neon signs glowering over the ant stumbling away with their stuff. The villains of the story, such that they are, are more often represented as a discombobulated police force more than our capitalist overlords. McDonald’s and Toys “R” Us aren’t characters in this tale – they’re statements of fact, which makes the hammer blows when they do decide to flex their corporate muscles oddly affecting. By putting the story fully in its real-world context, we see the full spectrum of human messiness and joy confronted with the unfeeling might of a monopolised economy.
Just as importantly as its under-the-hood stuff, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more consistently entertaining film this year. The script steers away from laugh lines per se, letting the absurdity of the situation do the talking, which means moments of genuine tension are so rarely undercut with a witty quip. A sequence where the police storm through the toy store is real edge-of-your-seat stuff. Tatum and Dunst’s chemistry is palpable and, ultimately, heartbreaking, and though the plot at times threatens to topple into improbability, the apparent commitment to “the facts of the case” makes it difficult to find fault in it.
Quite why this sweet little festive flick (the last act happens in a toy store on Christmas Eve, for Santa’s sake) is being dropped into cinemas on an inconspicuous day in October is anyone’s guess. In an ideal world, this would be Paramount’s shot at a mince pie-friendly, mid-budget holiday workhorse.
Perhaps, with exclusivity windows now hardly worth the digital paper they’re written on, this is the studio’s plan, and we should be grateful for a brief big screen window at all. But this is a proper film, tailor-made for a cup of hot chocolate on a long winter evening. Roofman’s narrative might not have much in common with Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers – but both feel like the defining Christmas movies of their respective years, both denied the chance to bring festive crowds to the cinema.
As an argument against corporatism, it couldn’t be much more eloquent.
Roofman arrives in UK cinemas on 17th October.
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