Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in real caper

In films like Blue Valentine And The place Beyond the PinesHis TV mini-series I know this is true And his scenario works on Metal soundDerek Cianfrance has shown an affinity for bad mood material, often exploring working class lives, bruised masculinity and love imperfections. The director’s first feature film in nine years, RoofGo an unexpected route, again approaching these themes but with a delicate tone that makes room for lightness, comedy, romance and quiet melancholy.

A story of real crime which is also a tender character study, the film gives Channing Tatum its most moving role since Foxcatcher And made the actor is not exactly an intuitive couple with Kirsten Dunst something beauty. This is the kind of disarming pleasure for which shots causing teeth like “he will sneak and steal your heart” have been invented. What is refreshing Roof is that it is never too aggressive on this subject. It’s sentimental but sincere.

The same could be said for his protagonist Jeffrey Manchester (Tatum), a thief sentenced active in the late 90s and again in 2004, who is a candidate for the most intelligent and stupid career criminal. As a prison guard comments from the start in an interview: “He is a very intelligent individual, probably a genius. He is also a complete idiot. ” The enigma that Jeff is confronted on several occasions is how to be a decent guy and do good things for the people who are close to his heart when the only means available to him are crime and deception.

The real Manchester achieved more than 40 flights by breaking holes in the roofs of food franchise stores overnight, entering, then hiding to the quarter of the morning, when he went out with a firearm and inaugurated the employees in the fresh room without an appointment while he emptied the registrants to the cash. The most unusual part of his madness was not the entrance point but the calm and courteous way with which he spoke to his victims.

This aspect is demonstrated in a funny opening scene in which, while striking one of the many locations of McDonald’s, he kindly tells the staff to put their coats before refrigerating them. When the manager is balot that he came to work without a coat, Jeff gives his own.

The scenario of Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn never tries to justify Jeff’s crime, but with a pleasant economy, it presents the reasons why it has been pushed to desperate measures. A veteran of the army for which the army had no longer used, he returned to North Carolina and had trouble staying in the life of his three children, since their mother (Melonie Diaz) is impatient to move on.

His colleague soldier Buddy Steve (Lakeith Stanfield), who has his own shaded money manufacturing plans, tells Jeff that his superpower is observation. This plants the idea that meticulous planning and familiarization with his flight objectives can make him live a lucrative life without hurting anyone. He estimates that it will take 45 robberies of McDonald’s to get a house and better access to his children. But this dream seems to die when the “roofman”, as he is nicknamed in television reports, is apprehended and pronounced a long prison sentence.

The stranger that the part of the fiction of Manchester’s history is the ingenious way in which he escaped from the correctional establishment and managed to live not detected for months in the hidden spaces of a banal “R” toy store in Charlotte.

The natural charm of Tatum makes it completely plausible that Jeff can acquire good terms with the prison guards and trace his escape by studying the routines – and the vehicle – of a friendly delivery man who becomes involuntarily his way. But arrest, escape and hunting the next man are more than a sufficient justification for his ex-wife to insist so that they cut the cord.

There are a lot of clumsy and physical comedy in the way Jeff makes a house in the toy store, withdrawing in the Spider-Man bedding in its fortune neighborhoods. He rigged the video surveillance cameras, giving him the freedom to browse the aisles at night, remaining on candy and installs baby monitors to see what is going on in the office of the director of the Flinty Mitch store (Peter Dinklage). When he witnesses Mitch’s unfriendly refusal to give Salesclerk Leigh (Dunst) weekends to spend with his family or make a even insensible donation of goods returned to his church toy collection, Jeff begins to intervene.

The accidental circumstances of the Mignon by which he meets Leigh outside the store, triggering an initially provisional romance between the fugitive and the single mother who knows nothing about her true identity is soft, but never too disgusting.

It is largely because even when it flirts with a bunch of church ladies with sparkling eyes, there is no boastful, no smooth or cunning, no Ryan Reynolds-Brand sufficiency to the characterization of Tatum. He transmits Jeff’s need to become a loving family again with emotional hunger that increases the poignant character of the nuptial parade and the promising relationship that evolves.

Leigh de Dunst is lower, sufficiently burned by the divorce to be careful but also open enough to leave Jeff. With each little glance, each flicker of change in his expression and each tacit question, the wonderful Dunst transmits the glow of a woman finding warmth, company and sex while making the same Leigh enough to begin to suspect that something strange is happening with John.

But she is happy to observe John while he easily slips into a father’s role with his youngest daughter Dee (Kennedy Moyer) and slowly breaks down the defenses of the adolescent teenager Lindsay, beautifully played by Lily Collias, the gifted discovery of Indianson’s Undeen Gem, Good. John wins in a hilarious scene involving Jimmy O. Yang as a second -hand car seller.

All these warm and comfortable things are shaded by inevitable sadness while Jeff / John begins to recognize himself that sooner or later, someone recognizes him if he does not move on.

This requires an exit plan involving the twisted commercial operations of Steve and his girlfriend Michelle (Juno temple), who will cost, and that means another major flight. There is a tragic dimension to history, but Cianfrance keeps pathos on the soft-man side in the final stretch affecting.

With a beautiful work of the two tracks, the film benefits a lot from its deep bench of first -rate support players, all creating fully expanded characters with relatively short time. Stanfield is great as always, a faithful friend of Jeff even if he invariably seeks n ° 1; Temple makes Michelle copper but good nature; Dinklage can scratch the attractive qualities in the most shameless wickedness; Ben Mendelsohn is cast in a funny way against the type as a relentless positive pastor; And Uzo Aduba is a delight like his wife by Sunshine-Y.

Cianfrance and DP Andrij Parekh clearly opt for a vintage look without eyeshadows, at the cost of making the film visually a little dull, but not so significantly that it reduces the entertainment value. Of course, you can choose holes in some of the fictitious embellishments of the script, but it is such a sincere film with such a human vision of its ranging protagonist that it is both funny and affecting. Just give it up.