A Good Thief (Roofman) – A Full Room

Although the story is based on a true event, as announced by the beginning of a good thiefthe character of Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) appears exaggerated or not very credible.

Jeffrey is in a bad relationship with his wife with whom he has three children, including a daughter, the oldest, six years old, whom he adores. The film dedicates only a few minutes to his family at the beginning, and then disappears from the scene.

The specialty of the “roofman” is to make holes in the roofs of businesses to steal their items and the cash registers, where the cash collected from customers is kept. Their favorite stores turn out to be McDonald’s, which incidentally turns out to be good publicity (probably sponsors of the film). But the thinly veiled advertising is not just limited to the burger business, as there is a lot of it for m&m candy.

The reality is that the thief will be a fugitive from justice for about six months, living inside a Toys“R”Us store, a toy chain that is almost extinct today. Located in Charlotte, North Carolina, Manchester will create a kind of hidden bedroom within the business, where he can avoid being detected by Mitch (Peter Dinklage), his manager, by deleting the security videos, common in any business.

Jeffrey will also join the activities of a Protestant congregation, led by a pastor (Ben Mendelsohn), among whose members will be Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), also separated and with two daughters. She works in the toy store, unaware that it is the place where her new gospel-singing partner hides at night.

It will be the woman who takes the first step in conquering him, despite suspecting that the thief is gay. The greatest opposition will be found in Leigh’s eldest daughter, who takes a dim view of her mother’s new relationship. The same will not happen with the younger sister, who will like the mother’s new partner, especially because of the gifts he brings her, “courtesy” of the toy store. The eldest daughter’s resistance will be broken when she teaches her to drive the family car.

When Leigh asks him what his occupation is, he will lie to her saying that he works for the government, but being an “undercover” agent he is not in a position to give her more information, given the confidentiality of his (supposed) employment.

But at some point, the voice-over of the fugitive from justice will announce that: “a storm was coming.” This will actually happen in one of the few fun scenes, when Mitch appears unexpectedly and out of schedule and bumps into the occupant in one of the corridors of his toy store, in addition to him being completely naked at that moment.

The plot suffers from a double defect since, on the one hand, it is not credible, in addition to the fact that the whole deserves to be classified as a conventional story. The disappointment caused by the director Derek Cianfrance is great, from whom worthy previous works are rescued, such as Blue Valentine y The Light Between the Oceans.

(United States, 2025)

Address: Derek Cianfrance. Script: Derek Cianfrance, Kirt Gunn. List: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Peter Dinklage, Juno Temple, Ben Mendelsohn. Production: Lynette Howell Taylor, Duncan Montgomery, Alex Orlovsky, Jamie Patricof, Dylan Sellers. Duration: 126 minutes.