Lots of crime films make the law look glamorous, but few are as healthy as “Ceiling. ” Director Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”, the site Beyond the Pines “) focuses on the human element of his real crime inspiration in this superficial audience, based on the life of a North Carolina man who fled from prison after the series with fast food that gave this film Its title. He then continued to live in the gut in a Toy’s “R” US store for more than six months, before being caught again after committing another armed robbery in the same store where he had been hidden.
It is the type of yarn that serves the description “Stranger than fiction” and the details of how Jeffrey Manchester (Channing tatumGaunter than usual but just as toned) could build a provisional life of objects that cleared from a toy store is fascinating. (This was 2004, so a lot of “Spider-Man” goods were involved.) Unfortunately, unfortunately, the “roof man” also also capitulates to the moderate requirements of Hollywood stories and left the aspects of Manchester’s story on the table. And the movie is forgetful as a result.
Here, “The Human Element” means Jeffrey who observes the everyday dramas and petty power struggle on Toys “R” us through a series of baby monitors that he smartly mounted in the boss’s office, not the crushing iron of him hiding in a store that floats over with the same plastic status symbols that made him a ban in the first place. (As we learn early on, the humiliation of not being able to buy her daughter was a bicycle for her sixth birthday the urgent incident of Jeffrey’s criminal career.) The latter is far too political for this movie, which is true even though “Takman” is overwhelming on Jeffrey’s side.
Lakeith Stanfield together with Steve, Jeffrey’s old army friend who has a side line in fake passports. At one point Steve goes to a tour in Afghanistan and takes back with his forgery when he returns. He does not do this because he is a greedy person or for the tension in it; In America where these characters live, a bit of law bending is exactly what you have to do to get by. “Roofman” spends little effort given the deeper (and, to be justice, more depressing) consequences of this reality; Instead, it moves up and says it’s okay, because they’re not really evil guys from within.
This is especially true for the nature of Jeffrey, who Steve accuses of being a “poor criminal” because he cares too much about the people around him. Tatum stretches his actors in scenes where Jeffrey’s Con-Man-Karisma is under laid with desperation and fraud, but there is nothing in Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn’s script to seriously challenge Tatum’s person as a leading man. The opening scene is purely charming, when Jeffrey breaks into a McDonald’s before they open and take three employees hostage and insist that they put on their coats before locking them in the walk-in freezer so they don’t get cold. The boss doesn’t have a coat that morning, so Jeffrey gives him his.
Making Jeffrey something less equivalent would completely sink the other half of “Takman”, which slows down the pace to a winding when Jeffrey begins a sweet romance with Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a single mother working on the toys “r” us. There is a world where it is scary for Jeffrey to the court Leigh after secretly watching her for months, but again it is not that kind of movie. Instead, Cianfrance simplifies another complicated dynamic such as Leigh, her daughters and the married couple (Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba) who preach on her church embraces Jeffrey or, as they know him, “John Zorn”-with the opening Naiveé that only church people can have. If Leigh has any reservations about “John’s” sudden look from “New York City”, or his extremely false sounding job, she doesn’t express them. This is not a deficiency in her character, but yet another symptom of a fatigue of the working class that exists, but is never treated, in the story.
Tatum and Dunst have good romantic chemistry, although Dunst really shines when “Takman” cards are both more serious and more artificial shot late in the film. Her disappointment to learn that she, no, she can not only have something good to happen to her for once is devastating, and too little screen time is devoted to it. Everything is part of a moral footnote that feels like an obligation – Okay, good, it might not be cool to be criminal, even if you are smart and charming and unusually smooth – Compared to the film’s comic scenes. Of these, Peter Dinklage appears as an underdog MVP as the store’s Dickhead manager, especially in a scene where he catches Jeffrey naked and showers in men’s rooms. On the whole, however, “Takman” is more than a rush, largely due to a longer 119-minute run time which still leaves many of its juicy elements unexplored.
Buzz around “Roofman” will undoubtedly focus on its real criminal elements, as well as the reconstituted toys “R” the US store where much of the film takes place. Nostalgia is one thing, but if you really think about it, there’s something perverse about taking the husk of a chain store drive to bankruptcy by liveged buyouts and rebuilding it using money, by a Movie studio partly owed by a private Equity OWED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVAGE BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVED BY A PRIVE EQUIT Own recounting, became a thief because he couldn’t provide for his children by doing things “The right way.” The difference is that Jeffrey Manchester went to jail for what he did.
Rating: C+
“Roofman” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. Paramount releases the film in theaters on Friday 10 October.
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