{"id":2081462,"date":"2025-10-10T09:35:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T09:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2081462"},"modified":"2025-10-10T09:35:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T09:35:07","slug":"in-roofman-channing-tatum-is-the-good-guy-and-the-bad-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/in-roofman-channing-tatum-is-the-good-guy-and-the-bad-guy\/","title":{"rendered":"In ‘Roofman,’ Channing Tatum is the good guy. And the bad guy."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jeffrey Manchester is a fugitive. He also happens to be a pretty nice guy. He robs dozens of McDonald\u2019s locations by entering through the roofs and trapping employees in walk-in refrigerators, but he usually tries to make sure everyone is wearing a coat first.<\/p>\n

Even after he\u2019s caught, Manchester \u2014 played in a new film by Channing Tatum, his natural geniality at full volume \u2014 continues his nice-guy ways when he escapes from a North Carolina prison. He tries to lay low but ends up attending services at a local church, where he falls for a kind single mother named Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst).<\/p>\n

Of course, Leigh has no idea that her new boyfriend is not only using a pseudonym and deceiving her about his top-secret government job, but also hiding out from the police by living in the walls of the Toys \u201cR\u201d Us at which she works. He\u2019s nice, but a liar.<\/p>\n

Therein lies the central tension of \u201cRoofman,\u201d a lighthearted drama loosely based on the real-life story of a former U.S. Army Reserve officer. The film largely takes place during a six-month period when this antihero bounces between his two identities: Is he resigned to life as Jeffrey Manchester, a struggling father who turned to crime as a means of providing for his family, or could he possibly reinvent himself as \u201cJohn Zorn,\u201d Leigh\u2019s charming beau and a reliable father figure to her two teenage daughters?<\/p>\n

This internal struggle transforms \u201cRoofman\u201d from what could have been a run-of-the-mill heist movie into an intriguing character study, even if it falls just short of success.<\/p>\n

Given the film\u2019s buoyant humor and the silly image of a Hollywood hunk hiding out in a toy store, it might surprise some to learn that \u201cRoofman\u201d was directed and co-written by Derek Cianfrance, who earned a reputation for heart-wrenching melodrama with \u201cBlue Valentine<\/a>\u201d in 2010 and \u201cThe Place Beyond the Pines<\/a>\u201d more than two years later. \u201cRoofman,\u201d written with Kirt Gunn, is a much breezier watch \u2014 but it still embodies Cianfrance\u2019s trademark fascination with desperate choices and their unavoidable consequences.<\/p>\n

Jeff makes one bad decision after another, often against the advice of his frustrated Army buddy Steve (LaKeith Stanfield). Tatum is an apt casting choice, having mastered the art of playing lovable goofs<\/a> by summoning a sensitivity that endears them to the audience. There is a doggedness to Jeff\u2019s most stubborn tendencies, a relentless desire to provide for others that Tatum conveys with vigor. Jeff might quietly sneak around Toys \u201cR\u201d Us at night, but he bulldozes his way through life.<\/p>\n

Leigh is more cautious. She is a protective mother and as guarded in love, slow to allow Jeff\/John into her inner world despite being the one to ask him out in the first place. Dunst plays the character like a woman curled into herself. Her hesitant movements suggest she has been burned before, which the man she knows as John is perceptive enough to pick up on.<\/p>\n

Though \u201cRoofman\u201d boasts a strong supporting cast \u2014 including Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba as a pastor and his wife, plus a hilarious Peter Dinklage as Leigh\u2019s abusive boss \u2014 the film thrives most in scenes between John and Leigh. As in \u201cBlue Valentine,\u201d Cianfrance excels at capturing the fuzzy feelings of new love. He trains his camera on Leigh singing at church as though she is the only person in the choir, allowing viewers to share in John\u2019s adoration. Cianfrance and cinematographer Andrij Parekh contrast the harsh lighting and vibrant hues of Toys \u201cR\u201d Us with a gentler color palette whenever John spends time in Leigh\u2019s presence, signaling the calming effect she has on him.<\/p>\n

While this romance fuels \u201cRoofman,\u201d it can\u2019t always mask weaker points in the script. Beyond establishing his stubborn nature, the film doesn\u2019t fully explore why Jeff, a rather well-mannered person, insists on staging robberies to stay afloat. Was this really his only option? Cianfrance passes on the opportunity to examine the failures of a system that encourages a veteran to defy law enforcement out of sheer desperation.<\/p>\n

And so the film falters as Jeff is yanked back into the reality of his precarious situation. While Tatum and Dunst do their best to see it through, tasked with delivering carefully calibrated performances as Jeff\u2019s two lives come crashing together, \u201cRoofman\u201d leaves us hanging.<\/p>\n

R<\/b>. At area theaters. Contains language, nudity and brief sexuality. 126 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeffrey Manchester is a fugitive. He also happens to be a pretty nice guy. He robs dozens of McDonald\u2019s locations by entering through the roofs and trapping employees in walk-in refrigerators, but he usually tries to make sure everyone is wearing a coat first. Even after he\u2019s caught, Manchester \u2014 played in a new film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2029532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[320289,362271,366997,350306,364747],"class_list":["post-2081462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-channing-tatum","tag-jeffrey-manchester","tag-john-zorn","tag-kirsten-dunst","tag-leigh-wainscott"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/In-Black-Rabbit-Jason-Bateman-and-Jude-Law-are-brothers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2081463,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081462\/revisions\/2081463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2029532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}