The key to being a good criminal, according to LaKeith Stanfield’s army veteran-turned-passport-forger Steve, is that you have to be cool and calculating. “You’ve got the calculating part down,” he tells Channing Tatum’s Jeffrey Manchester, “but…you’re too goofy.”
That, in a nutshell, is Derek Cianfrance’s approach to Roofman, a movie based on a true story so absurd it must be seen to be believed. Cianfrance is the director behind such devastating films as Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, so for him to direct a lighthearted crime comedy feels a little unexpected, to say the least. But as Roofman takes increasingly wacky turns, most of them owing to the truly bizarre turns of the story of Jeffrey Manchester, it’s Cianfrance’s deft touch that maintains the tricky balance between the absurd and the affecting.
