Quick Synopsis: The true story of Jeffrey Manchester, an armed robber who escapes prison and secretly hides in a Toys R Us for six months.
I was quite hyped for this, the trailer made it look fun and pacier than a blue hedgehog wearing trainers. So it was somewhat of a shock when I realised it was over two hours long. The concept (man hides in Toys R Us) didn’t feel like it had enough meat on it to justify that runtime. I’ve now seen it, and those fears were not without merit. It overly complicates what should be a relatively simple story, and just isn’t fun enough.
Roofman is weirdly cosy, at times playing like a Hallmark Christmas movie. On that note, it should have actually been a Christmas movie. So many of the emotional and narrative set-pieces are built around it in the final third, so they really should have just leaned into it and released it a few weeks later. It also meant that it would have been played on TV every single year. At the moment, I can’t really see many TV stations rushing to show this. It doesn’t really have much to it.
Maybe it would have helped if we actually saw more of how he operates. He goes from a normal person to a serial thief off-screen. We’re shown him thinking about committing armed robbery, to having already committed almost 40 of them. I’m not saying we needed all of them in full, but it wouldn’t have hurt Roofman to cut some of its superfluous moments and replace them with a robbery montage near the start. This would have improved the pacing and made it flow a bit better than it currently does. Also, it would have made him seem more competent. We’re told he’s great at noticing things; he commits 5 crimes in this movie. One, he gets caught and thrown in prison, not good. Then he escapes prison, all good there, but heavily dependent on luck. He camps out in the store, but commits simple errors whilst doing so (he’s clearly noticeable on security cameras). Fourth, he goes to break into a pawn shop and ends up in the building next door by mistake, a failure. Lastly, the toy store again, which he messes up. So the only time he objectively succeeds is in escaping prison. We don’t see him being good at his “job”. A montage would have solved something; we would have seen what makes him so talented.
I have a specific problem with the pawn shop robbery. He ends up in the building next door and breaks through the wall to the pawn shop. This sets the alarm off. He then breaks the glass door with a giant statue and escapes. Does this lead to an exciting police chase? No. Does this lead to a moment of panic where he realises how reckless he’s being? No. Does it lead to a near miss? Nope. So what does it do? It gets him a gun. That’s it. The alarms, etc, don’t matter to the plot at all. So what was the point of that scene? It’s America, “but how did this white person get a gun?” is not a question any audience members would have asked; we would have assumed he found it in a cereal box or something. Asking where an American got a gun from is like asking where a 19th-century London prostitute caught syphilis from; it would be more surprising if they didn’t have it. There are a few other moments which aren’t followed up on; he breaks into the store’s computer to change someone’s shifts. That’s never followed up on; at no point does the manager notice, “hang on, I had this person due to work and now they’ve mysteriously disappeared from the roster, who did this?”
Now onto the romance part of the film. I’m not opposed to it. The worst part of it is that it kind of negates his kids. He goes from “my children are my entire world, it’s why I do what I do”, to “Wooo new family”. He tries to contact his kids once or twice, but his focus and motivation definitely seem to be on his new relationship. The relationship between the two feels real, and her inner conflict towards the end makes complete sense when you take into account her character and personality. Usually, a relationship between a woman and a criminal is displayed in a “she softened his hardened heart, and hardened his…” way. But Roofman takes great lengths to display how kind a person he is, even before that, only committing crimes so he can buy the necessities for his family (a big TV, a brand new bike, mariachi singers for a birthday. You know, the essentials), so he doesn’t really change at all. Really, it’s just two people who stay exactly the same for the entire film, with no personal growth. Yes, he is looking to escape to another country when he can, but that never seems to be his main motivation. The “I am flying away” parts only take up roughly 5 minutes of screen time, and could be missed entirely with a few badly timed pissbreaks. All it needed was for him to put posters of his destination on the wall.
In summary; not a perfect film. It’s likeable enough, but has less weight than a helium balloon. The kind of film you stick on at Christmas to have on in the background as you sleep off a cheese coma.
the ethics of justice with the brash Kurt Russel, or stopping everyone from shooting each other. Walton Goggins on the other hand is just having a blast as the fun loving, dorky, hill-billy-esque former confederate, who is so country and western he says things like, “I’ll be double dog dammed”, and you can’t help but smile at his every slapstick manoeuvre. He and Roth are like the two sides to the same chocolate and cheese coin. Goggin’s character also has the best (and I think only) arc in the film.
But the cabin is large and surprisingly complex, with each corner, from the bar to the fireplace, becoming their own country and safe ground for the characters. What I’m saying I guess is for a film predominantly set in one room, it still feels large and epic.
talk about it. It’s bloody, it’s fun, its ambiguous, yet somehow also satisfying enough, as those you want to see get it do (for the most part) and those you want to see make good also do (for the most part), without resorting to anything overly happy….Though the more I think about it the more it seems like a re-tread of Reservoir Dogs. Still for a film that gets so messy in every way, it has strong closing minutes.
Demián Bichir’s character’s biggest trait is that he’s Mexican…oh and he played piano in that one scene. For a film this long and boasting an apparently hateful 8 (even though theres like ten of them really), its inexcusable that almost half the cast are uninteresting 
underdeveloped characters, there just to pad out the length like tissue in a bra.
But it gets so bogged down with detours, homage, pointless scenes, sucking it’s own dick, and having a bullshit twist it never really gets there. And it could have been great if it did! A Tarantino whodunit, that just sounds amazing. With the same set of
Because despite the last trailer giving WAY too much away, who isn’t going to see this film? It’s Batman fighting Superman…for at least a third of the film anyway. And despite that trailer there’s still hope. The idea that Batman is turned against Superman because of the chaos he caused in Man of Steel is good screenwriting; it makes sense from a character point and helps bring the films together. The casting is also very solid, with Batfleck actually looking to be one of the best iterations of the Dark Knight yet. But we all still need to take a step back to wait and see whether Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor is the trainwreck everyone is HOPING it will be, or whether like Keaton and Ledger before him he will turn in a great performance despite the naysayers. I have no idea, but I at least love how much fun he seems to be having.
two superhero films because I didn’t want it to be inundated with them, and I wanted this to be a cut away from a lot of most anticipated lists by not just focusing on the big blockbusters coming our way (but saying that I am looking forward to Civil War and Dr Strange).
Disney’s next animated film after the disappointing Big Hero 6 (and fuck you it wasn’t that good) brought to us by the directing duo behind some of Disney’s greatest films (
Kubo and the two strings: August 19
Ben Affleck finally took a break from acting to get back to his much more interesting career as a director, with this follow up to Argo. Adapted from another 
Troubled Productions 