Review: 'Roofman' puts Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst in an absurd true-crime story, and finds the loneliness and love underneath.

The wacky, but true, premise of “Roofman” turns out to be only half the story of the completed movie, a surprisingly tender movie about crime, love and the tricky nature of second chances.

Channing Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester, an ex-soldier who took to crime after his return from Afghanistan in the late ‘90s. His modus operandi was to break through the roof of a McDonalds, then wait for the morning crew to arrive. Then he would get them to open the store’s safe, then put the workers in the walk-in freezer.

Jeffrey applies the proceeds from these robberies around North Carolina, for which the media dubs him “the roofman,” to his young daughter (Alissa Marie Peterson), and briefly rekindling his marriage to Talena. It’s all going well for Jeffrey, until it doesn[t — when he’s caught in 1998, and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Prison, Jeffrey soon figures out, is a system like any other — and if you blend into the crowd, and are generally nice to others, they will forget about you, which makes escape controllable. After he escapes, Jeffrey gets some advice from Steve (LaKeith Stanfield), a former comrade from Afghanistan who’s now selling phony ID’s. Steve’s advice: Don’t run; lie low and find some place to hide until public interest in the escape dies down.

Jeffrey finds that hiding place in an unseen space in a Toy’s ‘R’ Us store. From there, he lives off of baby food and M&M’s and wears Spider-Man t-shirts — and he disables the store’s surveillance cameras, and creates his own network using baby monitors so he can keep an eye on the employees and the store’s officious manager, Mitch (Peter Dinklage). He also notices Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), who prods Mitch unsuccessfully to donate some surplus inventory for her church’s toy drive.

Venturing out from his hiding place, Jeffrey takes some toys to Leigh’s church, and soon finds himself welcomed by the church’s husband-and-wife pastors (Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba). He also connects with Leigh, a divorced mom with two daughters — Dee (Kennedy Moyer), who’s 11 and quickly accepts Jeff’s presence, and Lindsay (Lily Collias), a sullen 16-year-old who objects to her mom bringing a new man into the house.

Director Derek Cianfrance isn’t known for comedy — his best known movies are the dark dramas “Blue Valentine,” “The Place Beyond the Pines” and “The Light Between Oceans” — so it’s a nice surprise that he plays the absurdities of Jeffrey’s situation with such a light touch. At the same time, though, he and co-writer Kirt Gunn dig into the raw emotions as Jeffrey and Leigh take their first steps out of their loneliness, a risk for both of them for different reasons.

Tatum and Dunst give tender performances, one holding back because of his dangerous secret, the other hoping he’ll let down his guard and let her in. They raise “Roofman” from what could have been a ridiculous true-crime comedy to something truly touching.

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‘Roofman’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 10, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language, nudity and brief sexuality. Running time: 126 minutes.