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‘Lost Bus,’ ‘Roofman,’ and the Fatherly Wiring of Men
I’m always looking for movies and other pop culture expressions that contain common-grace truth—especially on topics where falsehood or propaganda are more common.
Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus and Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman are movies like that. Though different in genre and story, and certainly not commendable in every respect (both are rated R), these well-made movies make subtle, refreshingly true observations about manhood and fatherhood. At a time when so much that Hollywood makes explicitly blurs gender distinctions and undermines the calling of fatherhood, Christians should welcome films like these.
‘The Lost Bus’: Fatherly Protection
On the surface, The Lost Bus doesn’t seem to be about fatherhood. It’s a real-life disaster movie about the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California. The story follows a school-bus driver, Kevin (Matthew McConaughey), tasked with driving a stranded group of elementary students to an evacuation point as fire unexpectedly starts consuming the town. Like much of Greengrass’s other work (United 93, Captain Phillips), the movie is a heart-pounding, white-knuckle survival thriller. But it’s also a story about fatherhood.
Kevin’s biological fatherhood is foregrounded from the start. He has a difficult relationship with his teenage son (Levi McConaughey) but loves him dearly and is fiercely protective when he’s at risk—a subplot that adds to the film’s drama. But it’s Kevin’s fatherly disposition with children who aren’t his own that makes the movie inspiring. As the blaze worsens, it becomes clear: Kevin is all that stands between these kids and a fiery fate. His fatherly instincts kick in, and he does everything he can to protect these children from the inferno.
It’s interesting that on the bus is also a female teacher chaperone, Mary (played by America Ferrera). Mary takes on a motherly role that complements Kevin. Though they hadn’t met before that fateful day, Mary and Kevin naturally assume the mother and father roles as they care for these kids in a moment of distress. Kevin drives the bus through a hellish inferno and literally fights flames when they threaten the bus. Mary calmly comforts and nurtures the children in their emotional distress. Kevin focuses his attention on the external threats; Mary tends to the well-being of those inside the bus.
Kevin isn’t a perfect father figure. But the movie captures something true and good about how men (even single, childless men) are wired to face perilous challenges bravely to protect the innocent—as a father should.
‘Roofman’: Fatherly Provision and Presence
If Kevin in The Lost Bus is a flawed father figure, Jeffrey in Roofman (Channing Tatum) is a downright scoundrel. Yet despite his reckless choices, Jeff can’t escape his fatherly wiring. He deeply wants to provide for his family. He just goes about this good desire in bad ways.
Directed by Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines), Roofman hews fairly closely to the strange true story of Jeffrey Manchester, a serial robber who, in the early 2000s, came to be called “Roofman” for his method of entering targeted businesses (most often McDonald’s) by drilling through the roof. Yet the title has a subtle double meaning, because ultimately what motivates Jeff’s thievery isn’t his own material gain but his desire to provide for his children—to put a roof over their heads.
This is clear from the opening scene at his daughter’s birthday party, where Jeff is crushed that he can’t afford to give her a desirable present. If he can’t provide in even basic ways for his children, he feels like less of a man. Roofman is the tragic—though often funny—story of Jeff’s unfortunate choice to use bad means (stealing) to achieve a good end (providing).
The film also grapples with the tension many fathers feel between presence and provision. At one point, the woman Jeff is dating, Leigh (a single mother of two girls, played by Kirsten Dunst), tells him, “We don’t need so many things. We just want you.” It’s not that material provision is a bad thing for dads to desire. But sometimes focusing too much on providing undermines a dad’s presence with his family, as in the workaholic who’s never home or, in Jeff’s case, the dad whose illegal methods of providing send him to jail, where presence with his kids becomes impossible.
Cianfrance—who spoke with Manchester in prison extensively as he made the film—put it this way: “What Jeff learned, and what he told me about in prison, is that he wanted to provide for his family, and he did, but then all his agency as a father was taken away, so that he couldn’t provide anything. He couldn’t be around his family, and he couldn’t see them, and he couldn’t force them to come see him.”
It’s no one’s fault but his own. The film’s final scene—which I suspect is a nod to the potent final scene of the Dardenne brothers’ L’Enfant (2005)—shows Jeff being visited in prison by Leigh. They embrace and cry, with Jeff owning his mistakes and expressing regret. Then the screen goes black. As in the final scene of L’Enfant (a film that covers similar thematic terrain), Roofman’s ending is redemptive and cathartic, but also a gut-punch. What might have been? What kind of home and legacy could Jeff have built, had his good fatherly desires been channeled in healthier ways?
Decision Points
In both films, the men act in accordance with their design. Part of what’s distinctive about manhood—as Patrick Schreiner, J. Budziszewski, and others have argued—is the potentiality of paternity. This includes physical procreative potential, but also spiritual and psychological potential, such that even the masculinity of childless men is defined by this orientation toward fatherly behavior like protection, provision, and faithful presence.
What makes these stories dramatic is that the act of living into this design involves constant decisions that can either be wise or foolish, making or breaking a man. Men need wisdom to know what to do in these decisive moments; they need the guardrails of community and virtuous mentors who can steer them to actualize their masculinity in helpful ways. This is especially evident in Roofman, the tagline of which is “Based on actual events. And terrible decisions.”
Men need the guardrails of community and virtuous mentors who can steer them to actualize their masculinity in helpful ways.
There are several poignant moments in McConaughey’s and Tatum’s performances, when we can see an anguish in their faces that communicates, Did I make the wrong choice? Did I just jeopardize the well-being of those I’m supposed to protect? In Lost Bus, Kevin often worries that the direction he chose will actually worsen the peril of the kids in his care.
In Roofman, it’s the anguish of regret: Jeff knows his criminal activity won’t go unpunished. Jail will be unavoidable. Yet while he has a second chance at being a good dad, he wants to be. In between prison stints, he even starts attending a Presbyterian church with Leigh and her daughters (part of the true story). But mixed in with good choices are plenty of bad ones—ongoing robberies, premarital sex, constant deception. As I watched the film and pondered the unexpected church subplot, it struck me that this is a pivotal role churches play (and have always played): helping men and women thrive as men and as women, guiding them as they live into their God-given gender in virtuous, life-giving ways.
In the end, Roofman shows a tragic failure of manhood, while The Lost Bus shows heroic manhood. But both films are commendable in how seriously they wrestle with the unique calling and makeup of men. I suspect both reflect a growing hunger in our culture for a deeper, more redemptive vision of manhood.
Fatherhood Is Having a Moment
These two movies are just some of many recent examples of pop culture exploring more dignified, aspirational depictions of fatherhood. Even as marriage and fertility rates keep dropping, the brand of fatherhood—especially among men—is making significant gains.
I’ve heard it in music, like Jon Bellion’s Father Figure or Ben Rector’s The Richest Man in the World—2025 albums that celebrate marriage and fatherhood in beautiful ways. I’ve seen it with the popularity of Bluey, dadfluencer content on social media, or movies like Ford v. Ferrari or Minari that take seriously the father’s role in setting his family’s course. The bumbling TV-dad stereotype of the ’80s and ’90s has, in this century, given way to more sincere, noble depictions of fatherhood on shows like Friday Night Lights or This Is Us.
The bumbling TV-dad stereotype of the ’80s and ’90s has, in this century, given way to more sincere, noble depictions of fatherhood.
Leading athletes like Scottie Scheffler are saying things like “I’d much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer.” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has three kids younger than 5 with wife Brittany—and speaks often about loving fatherhood. His teammate Travis Kelce is eager to marry and start a family with Taylor Swift.
Recent data has shown that among young adults, men are now more likely than women to say they want children—reversing long-held assumptions that women are more inclined to desire parenthood. What’s behind this change? Maybe young men are starting to question the “capstone” place fatherhood has come to occupy in Western culture—the “icing on the cake” thing you might do only after you’re well established in your career. More dads are starting to say things like one Free Press writer does: “Having a child makes your life better—and makes you better.”
Welcome the Trend. Take Up the Discipleship Task.
I suspect the attractiveness of fatherhood is connected to the parallel trend of young men’s growing affinity for church. Having been brought low—emasculated by an egalitarian culture that tends to dismiss or deride masculinity—young men are leaning into habit changes that force them to mature, take responsibility, and embrace their fatherly potential both spiritually and practically.
Young men growing more desirous of fatherhood is a good and natural thing. It’s too soon to know whether or not this trend will reverse the troubling marriage and fertility declines. But I hope it does.
Christians can be grateful for films like The Lost Bus or Roofman when they reinforce God’s good design for manhood and fatherhood. Yet the church’s task goes further: not just helping men be men and women be women but guiding each toward faithful, holy manhood and faithful, holy womanhood, showing the world what it means to flourish as male and female together, beautifully complementary by the wisdom of God.
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