ROOFMAN or HOW MOM’S SECRET CONVICT BOYFRIEND WASN’T SO BAD, ACTUALLY.

It is not difficult to get me to root against law enforcement and the entrenched systems that left thousand of GWoT era vets with their ass out in the wind. 

It is more difficult to get me to root for an escaped convict who replaces his natural born family unit with a shake-and-bake family who really ought to have realized something was up with this dude. 

Channing Tatum plays Jeff/John Lovebomb, a habitual McDonald’s heister known locally as the Roofman. The film (told conveniently from his point of view) quickly tries to soften up his motivations. He wasn’t greedy, you see. He simply wanted to get good presents for his little girl, wanted his wife to respect him, and take care of his family. The Walter White special. 

The movie really wants you to get on board with how charming he is early, and Channing Tatum and his goofy, funny jock arche-type does a lot of the heavy lifting in this regard. Yeah, he puts working class McDonald’s employees in the freezer at gunpoint, but hey, he let’s them put their coats on! Hell, he even gives that guy his coat! 

This moment, where the McDonald’s morning manager looks at Jeff/John with his little quivering lip and John/Jeff gives him his coat, is the first of many bits that feel designed to have been put in the trailer to make the film feel more fun than it is. In another Sandler-esque scene, a soapy, nude Tatum runs, shrieking in a humorous falsetto at Peter Dinklage, who also screams and runs, you know, like a Looney Toon. It is fun! We’re having fun! But as Kirsten Dunsts character Leigh points out at a church dinner later, it’s not funny. When you think about it, it is really kind of sad. 

Before we get to Dunst and Leigh, lets take a moment to appreciate the supporting cast in this motherfucker. Ben Mendelsohn, as the pastor of the church Jeff/John begins to hang out at. LaKeith Stanfeld as Steve, John/Jeffs veteran buddy, playing the Guy you mean when you say you ‘Know a Guy’. Juno Temple as the girlfriend of Steve who does the thing Juno Temple does a lot where she sits around half-dressed in sleep wear, and as I mentioned before, Peter Dinklage. An absolutely stacked squad of character actors, and no one phones it in, not even the Dink, who I feel is often prone to it.

Shew. I’m gonna put this out there, and I will let the stones hit me as they fly: I think Kirsten Dunst is one of our best working actors. She moves with a gravitas and weight that is less celebrated, but just as heavy as an Anthony Hopkins or Phillip Seymore Hoffman. She has a way of finding the core of a character and bringing it to the surface in a way that is is easy to read, but never feels obvious or overstated. 

The only downsides to her inclusion in this movie is Tatum feels overmatched in their scenes together(but this kind of works for the dynamic) and she sells Leigh with too much wisdom and intelligence to believably fall for for Jeff/John’s ‘I do classified work for the government so you can’t see my house or know my job’ lines. 

This whole plot, which is the core of the film, mind you, is what loses this bird a half-star. I don’t think it is over-thinking to say that the way the relationship between John/Jeff and Leigh takes shape is a Problem. Especially when the kids get involved, which is almost immediately. 

This is a man who messed up one family, and then went and caught himself a new one, and immediately set about fucking that one up as well. A shot at the end shows the pictures of the two families on the wall of his prison cell, like we are supposed to feel sad for him. No sir, brother. You are collecting family units like Pokémon, snatching them up and then trying to trick them into loving you by giving them presents you have stolen, sometimes at gunpoint. 

I know the movie never presents the relationship as ideal, but in order for the movie to work, I need to feel some kind of investment in it, but I never do. He bought the preteen Zelda! He taught the angsty teen to drive, and bought her a car! The ending very much seems structured to try and get me to shed a tear for the good times Jeff/John and the Girlz had. “An Adventure,” Leigh calls it, in that final scene. 

Listen at me, though: This was a violent criminal stepping into the role of Daddy in less than 6 months. Maybe it is me bringing my own stuff to this, but I was never able to comfortably mesh with the movie, or feel the tension and drama of knowing he was going to be caught and that the family unit was going to fall apart. 

I feel like there is a cut of the movie that was a little less afraid to make it clear this dude sucks, and is in fact very dangerous that I would have enjoyed more.

Instead, I felt like one of John/Jeff’s hostages waiting anxiously for the whole thing to be done, hoping no one gets hurt before it is all over.