Derek Cianfrance brings Jeffrey Manchester’s story to the screen in the Charlotte-set Roofman, injecting a surprising dose of comedy into the true-crime genre.

Please make sure to stay during the credits for interviews with the real people.

Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum), a veteran of the Army’s 82nd airborne division and struggling father, turns to an unusual brand of crime as a way of providing for his family—robbing 45 McDonald’s by cutting through their roofs, a streak that earns him his nickname: Roofman. After breaking out prison, he secretly takes up residence inside a Toys “R” Us, surviving undetected for months as he plans his next move. Everything changes when he falls for Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst), a divorced mother who cannot resist him. As they get to know each other, his double life starts to unravel as authorities get closer to finding him.

Arrested in 1999 and sentenced to 45 years at the Brown Creek Correctional Institution, Jeffrey Manchester broke out of prison in June 2004 by stowing himself under a truck—an epilogue reveals he attempted the same stunt in both 2009 and 2017. Not living in Charlotte, N.C., or even in North Carolina, the first I ever heard of him was when Roofman was announced to premiere at TIFF. After all, his January 2005 apprehension happened while I was still in college. But I digress.

Derek Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn clearly put in the work on the Roofman screenplay. Manchester is based at a maximum-security prison in Raleigh, North Carolina, and their phone calls with him were limited to 15 minutes each—meaning multiple calls throughout the week over several years. Beyond Jeffrey, they also spoke with people who knew him during his time living under the alias “John Zorn,” creating a remarkably cohesive portrait.

One notable change in the film is Leigh working at Toys “R” Us rather than an automotive company. After learning about a toy drive at Crossroads Church, Jeffrey breaks out of his hidden enclosure behind the bicycle rack, meeting Pastor Ron Smith (Ben Mendelsohn), his wife Jan (Uzo Aduba), and, of course, Leigh. In Roofman, Leigh is portrayed as a single mother of two, though in real life she had three children.

Even with all these interviews informing the script, Roofman is told almost entirely from Jeffrey’s point of view, including narration drawn from his actual phone calls. It’s a storytelling choice that works, because the film wouldn’t feel the same from anyone else’s perspective. And genre-wise, it defies easy classification: crime, comedy, and romance all weave together in just over two hours, with G-d only knows how much did not even make it into the final shooting script. The changes made for narrative clarity never distract from the bigger picture.

True-crime films usually fall squarely into drama, so seeing one lean into comedy is a welcome breath of fresh air. It’s not just that I personally gravitate toward comedy—having come up in improv—but that post-pandemic America desperately needs more laughter, especially during such a polarized time. I’m not sure how Roofman will fare at the box office, but I expect it will find a following when it hits Paramount+. That said, laughter is contagious, so if you can, see it in theaters.

I don’t usually think of films set 20 years ago as period pieces—maybe that’s because I lived through the early 2000s—but Roofman really does feel dated in all the right ways. Manchester relies on pay phones or flip phones, computers run on Windows 95, and, of course, there’s a Toys “R” Us—a brand that filed for bankruptcy in 2017. The original location has since become a megachurch, but the filmmakers found a vacant store nearby and fully restored it with toys for 11 days of shooting. Considering how massive these stores are, it’s remarkable they pulled it off two decades later.

In many ways, Roofman is also a commentary on how America treats its veterans. There was no reason Jeffrey Manchester should have had to turn to crime to support his family, and that’s heartbreaking. Even knowing his criminal fate is inevitable, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him. Ultimately, Roofman is a compelling mix of crime, comedy, and heart, and it’s a story worth experiencing on the big screen.

DIRECTOR: Derek Cianfrance
SCREENWRITERS: Derek Cianfrance & Kirt Gunn
CAST: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang, and Peter Dinklage

Paramount Pictures released Roofman in theaters on October 10, 2025. Grade: 4/5

Please subscribe to Solzy on Buttondown and visit Dugout Dirt.