Everyman, Bristol
Another true story. Another end-credit montage so we can see how accurately the actors’ impersonated the real people.
Having complained that I Swear is an enacted documentary that never quite manages to be a movie, it would probably be mean to complain that Roof Man has over-romanticised its material—so an unlikely but true story becomes too fantastic to take seriously. Are we watching a true-crime drama; a heist-gone-wrong melodrama; or a romantic comedy. Or, come to that, a romantic tragi-comedy.
Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) is an ex-soldier who can’t fit into civilian life. He’s ashamed of not being able to buy his little girl nice things on her birthday, so he decides to become an armed robber. In the army he was very good at observing and noticing things and understanding systems; and he puts this “superpower” to use, breaking into fast-food outlets through the roof in the middle of the night and waiting until the security man arrives to pick up the week’s takings from the safe. Having done this forty five times he throws his daughter a lavish birthday party, is raided by the police and sentenced to forty five years in prison. But his same obsession with detail and timetables pays off, and he is able to escape by observing the times when delivery trucks arrive and leave, and attaching himself to the underside of a vehicle. In the army, he had experience of being alone in the woods for months at a time, and foraging to survive, so he conceals himself in a large toy-shop (I forget the name: there is a lot of product placement) and survives on M&Ms and baby food.
All of which is apparently true; although I kept finding myself questioning whether it could possibly have been this easy. Didn’t his wife question where all the money was coming from? Can changing a single parameter on a PC really switch off a large store’s CCTV system for weeks or months, and wouldn’t anyone notice? Could you really change employees schedules by making a single alteration to a spread sheet?
The sequences in which he was being an inadequate but very well meaning Daddy reminded me forcibly of Paul Rudd in Ant-Man. During the toy-shop sections he seemed to transmogrify into early Jim Carey—rampaging around the shop on roller skates, knocking over piles of talking Muppet dolls and lathering up in the men’s toilet as if he were taking a shower in his apartment. Doubtless the real-life Jeffrey did find an unused corner of the shop to hide in; but I wonder if he really constructed a teenage man-cave from inflatable air-beds and Spider-Man duvet covers--complete with baby-alarms to allow him to spy on the shop staff.
Because he is a good criminal, he steals a lot of toys and donates them to a church charity run by Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst) who works at the toy store where he is hanging out. She doesn’t appear to connect vanishing stock from her place of work with generous donations to her place of worship. The Church is amusingly naff, with pop-music worship, no sermons, and a sign on the door saying “Free Trip To Heaven”; but it seems to be entirely populated by nice people who practice what they preach. Inevitably, Jeffrey and Leigh end up having an affair; and Jeffrey charmingly and not-at-all creepily befriends her stroppy teenaged children. But things turn much darker when his former army buddy (LaKieth Stanfield) puts together fake ID and passports to allow him to leave the country. Jeffrey has to steal $50,000 to pay for the new identity, which involves an even more audacious robbery at the same toy shop where he hides and Leigh works….
Believable or not, it makes for a tolerably enjoyable movie. At times Jeffrey is a lovable rogue—even a latter day Robin Hood—despite clearly being a very serious and amoral crook. We are meant to kind-of like him because he offers the burger flippers coats before locking them in a walk-in fridge; but he is nevertheless locking them in a walk-in fridge. And I am not sure we should be prepared to say “How whacky and ironic! The stranger that you allowed to inveigle himself into your house and play with the your kids turns out to be running from a life-sentence for kidnapping!” In a different movie, Jeffrey would have been a dangerous convict, and we would have been rooting for Leigh to see through him before it’s too late: but I think in this one we are supposed to see how great he is with kids and how well he behaves in the daft church and hope he gets away with it.
Classify as “highly enjoyable but slightly conflicted romp” perhaps.
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