Roofman has hit the big screen, retelling the almost surreal true story of Jeffrey Manchester, an Army veteran and father whose life took a dramatic turn into the criminal underground in early-2000s North Carolina. Manchester became known for robbing McDonald’s restaurants by cutting through their roofs, earning himself the nickname “Roofman” before being arrested and sentenced. After serving just four years in prison, he escaped in June 2004, managing to live undetected for six whole months inside a Charlotte-area Toys “R” Us, using the store as a hideout.
Channing Tatum plays Manchester and also served as executive producer, while Kirsten Dunst portrays Manchester’s then-girlfriend Leigh Wainscott- both incredible, Oscar-worthy performances. So much so, Tatum’s involvement in the project turned into his receipt of the TIFF Tribute Performer Award at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
Toronto International Film Festival 2025
Kirsten Dunst highlights the emotional and psychological nuances of someone unknowingly entangled in a fugitive’s double life, in ways that can’t be translated into words. She represented Leigh as a hard-working divorced mother, a voice in her church’s choir, a positive and charitable woman whose strength, intelligence, and heart blind her, briefly, to the danger beneath Manchester’s façade.
Kirsten Dunst and Channing Tatum on the set of Paramount Pictures’ “ROOFMAN.”
Directed by Derek Cianfrance and written along with Kirt Gunn, they wrote the screenplay for the film after researching Manchester’s story and talking with him on the phone for about 400 hours. The stacked supporting cast includes Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield, Ben Mendelsohn, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, and Jimmy O. Yang- it’s a gamble on when exactly you’ll laugh, or burst into tears.
The rest of this cast brings an extraordinary level of realism to the film because many of them actually lived through these events. The real truck driver, the actual arresting officer, the real pastor, the real swat officer…each play themselves. Even Leigh, the woman Manchester dated while living undercover, was featured in the film as a crossing guard and helped inform the character portrayed by Dunst. By grounding the film in the real people and places affected by Manchester’s actions, the story moves beyond the headlines.
When asked about the emotional intensity and depth of their final scene together, Tatum shared “They kept us apart that day. I didn’t know where she was going to be in the waiting room. We didn’t block the scene, we didn’t rehearse it. We just kind of went in and we knew what the scene was and we just did it. And that was the take.”
While based on criminal acts, Roofman also raises questions about forming identity, building trust (and who to trust), and the thin lines between truth and survival. At its core, the film asks how far someone might go to disappear and how close they can come to belonging.
Roofman is in theaters now.
