Movie Review: Channing Tatum Charms the Socks off Kirsten Dunst, and us as “Roofman”

A dopey “on-the-spectrum” crook on the lam plot and two movie stars who know how to work a closeup headline the charms of the delightful and just dark enough “Roofman,” a caper comedy where the real caper is getting away with it.

It pairs up the graceful, athletic and best-in-comedic roles Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, an earthy actress who easily summons up wary, wounded and beguiling with just a dimpled smile and a twinkle in her eye.

Throw in the deadpan delight Lakeith Stanfield, June Temple who brings more to trashy-funny than any of her peers, Peter Dinklage at his most irritable and veteran Oz-villain Ben Mendelsohn — cast against type as a good-hearted pastor — and you’ve got yourself a winner.

Still not sold? Dinklage and Mendelsohn SING. Bet you didn’t hear that coming.

“Roofman” is a period piece comedy from the golden age of Big Box Stores, from Blockbuster Video to Best Buy and Toys R Us.

In the early 2000s, one physically fit and clever robber terrorized McDonald’s stores all over because he’d found the billion dollar franchise’s security Achilles Heel. Busting in through the roof after hours, and then making the manager empty the safe before opening in the AM was easy money. He did it 45 times.

Jeffrey Manchester was a former member of the famed 82nd Airborne parachuting infantry. He knew how to get into places and sometimes even pull himself out of them. One thing the movie leaves out is that he’d worked at a McDonalds. He knew corporate protocols.

“Roofman” gives our anti-hero a best friend and former comrade in arms (Stanfield at his most sarcastic) who tells him “observation” of “details” is his “superpower.”

The “Roofman” desperately wants to provide the finer working class things to his in-the-process-of-moving-on-ex (Melonie Diaz) and their three kids. But “superpower” or not, sooner or later — 45 robberies in — even physically fit commandos get caught.

This movie by writer and director of “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “The Light Between Oceans” (Derek Cianfrance) is about what happens after Manchester gets caught, ingeniously escapes from prison and has to hole up for months in the crawl space and after hours floor space of a Charlotte, N.C. Toys R Us.

Our lovable, pushover criminal — he gives his jacket to a McDonald’s manager (Tony Revolori) when he locks him in the store freezer — finds he can’t go home again, his wife’s moved on and the cops are watching all his old haunts like a hawk. So on the advice of that old Airborne comrade Steve (Stanfield), he shelters in place.

His dream? Fleeing the country to “somewhere with beach and NO extradition treaty,” Venezuela or Brazil.

But hiding out in that big box toy store, bathing in the bathroom, sleeping behind a false wall, clothing himself with colorful not-quite-kiddywear and dining on peanut M & Ms’, he immerses himself in the dynamics of the business and the friction within this culture.

The boss (Dinklage) is a brusque bully, not interested in the “personal life” issues divorced mom Leigh (Dunst) trots out whenever she needs time off. Our store squatter surreptitiously intervenes on her behalf. When Leigh asks that same boss for donations to her church’s toy drive, she’s rebuffed. The handsome ex-con can fix that, too.

That’s how they meet and how the “detail” oriented criminal falls in love and his best laid plans “gang aft agley,” as the poet said.

That church introduction is an unalloyed delight, almost wholly out of character for this filmmaker but not these two stars. Tatum’s Jeffrey, going by “John,” goes all tongue-tied amidst the widowed and divorced man-eaters of this integrated, musical and joyous church. Dunst does the worn down divorcee charmed to blushing by the hunk who pays her extra attention.

And seeing Mendelsohn (“Rogue One,” “The Dark Knight Rises”) paired with Uzo Aduba (“Orange is the New Black,” “Tallulah”) as the bubbly married couple who minister to this flock is enough to restore your faith in casting directors, if not Southern Fried Christianity. She plays matchmaker and when he breaks into song I just about fell out of my seat. They’re a hoot.

Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso”) scores points as shifty ex-Airborne Steve’s partner in crime.

I don’t know what it is about Charlotte, North Carolina and goofball crime stories — many of them true — that have big screen appeal. Remember Zach Galifiankis and “Masterminds?” Steven Soderbergh’s NASCAR yahoo caper comedy “Logan Lucky?” Something about the city, or maybe it’s haughty self-regard (I used to live there) makes dumb criminal tales from there irresistible.

Cianfrance betters those two earlier efforts by leaning into the “Cool Hand Luke” of the caper, the ways Manchester gets away with this and that, avoiding capture.

“When they stop watching you,” he says of “working” the guards and those he deals with in prison, “you can start watching them.”

That “keep running” and you’ll outdistance any police dragnet theory is dismissed by Manchester, who narrates his story and insists “The trick is to stop — find a place no one will look.”

No wonder the cops refer to this guy as some sort of savant, “maybe a genius,” and kind of “an idiot.”

The narrative drags on a bit as the story makes its turn towards the dark finale. But with its Christmas shopping climax, we may have ourselves the first delight of the holiday cinema season right here in mid-October. And if you miss Tatum and Dunst’s chemistry in cinemas, don’t fret. They’ll be “out” for good behavior and out on video by Veterans’ Day.

Rating: R, some violence, nudity, sex, profanity

Cast: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Lakeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Ben Mendelsohn, Tony Revolori and Peter Dinklage

Credits: Directed by Derek Cianfrance, scripted by Derek Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn. A Miramax/Paramount release.

Running time: 2:06