Channing Tatum’s Roofman Is a Bummer of a Feel-Good Movie
In Roofman, Channing Tatum plays a real-life lovable burglar and family man trying to make it in America. But while writer-director Derek Cianfrance clearly wanted a lighthearted, feel-good movie, Roofman is instead a dark exploration of American pathos.

Channing Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester in Roofman. (Paramount Pictures / Miramax)
Setting a tone of sweet quirkiness from the opening scene — complete with a Randy Newman–style clarinet-and-piano soundtrack — Roofman indicates right from the get-go that it’s offering nothing but pleasant comedy hijinks. The film is drawing on an eccentric true-crime case involving a divorced Army veteran in North Carolina named Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) who finds he can’t fit into regular jobs in civilian life. So in order to make money to support his children, he begins a series of burglaries of fast-food restaurants, especially favoring McDonald’s. He always breaks in through the roof, hence the nickname “Roofman.” And he’s noted everywhere for his extreme consideration and politeness to frightened employees as he knocks over the place.
“Just a real nice guy,” they tend to say afterward.
Jeff’s voice-over narration says we might be wondering how many McDonald’s you have to burglarize before you’re living a comfortable middle-class life that allows you to buy your daughter quality presents for her birthday. “Forty-five,” he tells us, as we see the spacious new house in a suburban neighborhood where his wife and daughters now live. That’s how many. Good to know.