The new movie "Roofman" is one of those ideas that, if it weren't based on a true story, nobody would have greenlit the screenplay because the facts are too unbelievable.
Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) is a soldier who, after returning from Afghanistan, has a life that is a disaster. Like so many people who return from war in this country, Jeffrey has no marketable skills and is unable to get any decent-paying job. He has no money and is married with three children, and his marriage is falling apart. Desperate to support his family, Jeffrey does something stupid and robs a local McDonald's. Even more unfortunately for Jeffrey, he locks the employees in a freezer, and the judge threw the book at him, adding kidnapping to his charges, sentencing him to a horrendous 45 years in prison.
It turns out that Manchester is super intelligent with high-level observational skills, making his life after the war even more unfortunate because nobody in the Veterans Administration took the time to recognize his high IQ and train him for a high-paying job that takes advantage of his high-functioning brain. How many thousands of veterans experience homelessness, depression, and suicide after returning from war, because nobody in the Veterans Administration takes the time to help them?
All of this sets the stage for Manchester to use his high IQ and observational skills to not only break out of prison but to evade the police for an amazing six months. Jeffrey stayed in the immediate area after escaping from prison and hid inside a Toys R US, by using a large unused storage area to live and sleep and stay hidden from everybody in the store.
This story is even more insane because after the many television broadcasts showing Manchester's face, after only a few months, Manchester became a known member of the town he was living in, and even fell in love with a divorced woman with two children Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst). Manchester frequently attended Church with Wainscott, who was a member of the Church choir. This part of the story is the most unbelievable because after the prison escape, Jeffrey Manchester's face was all over television, and after only a few months, out of all the hundreds of people he knew in the town, nobody remembered his face from the prison break?
The end of this story had to do with Manchester trying to use a friend he knew from the war to help him escape to a different country, and it was easy to guess the conclusion, which did not diminish the high quality of this movie
The Rotten Tomatoes is a high, well-earned 84% and I agree with this rating and give a strong recommendation to this film.
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