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.
Troubled Productions 