Ask any loving parent what lengths they’d go to protect their own child, and the response of “kill for them” might not sound completely unreasonable in this hypothetical context. It’s a dynamic that has been explored in many films, including post-apocalyptic thrillers such as The Road and Light of My Life, and it forms the dramatic nucleus of She Rides Shotgun, the latest film by filmmaker Nick Rowland (Calm with Horses). Based on a novel by Jordan Harper, who adapts his own material alongside screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski — who have previously collaborated with director David Bruckner on The Night House and 2022’s Hellraiser — She Rides Shotgun is a road movie of sorts, charting an individual with violent tendencies as he takes his daughter under his wing to flee from dangerous associates who have marked him for death. The film suffers from an inherent familiarity within the material, ultimately reaching a conventional resolution, but it does have power in its co-leads, with Taron Egerton and newcomer Ana Sophia Heger taking on the respective father and daughter roles as they run for their lives. The strengths of the film rest squarely on their shoulders, and they mostly manage to help carry it across the finish line.
Heger plays Polly, an 11-year-old girl with a seemingly normal life in New Mexico. One day, neither her mother nor stepfather appear to pick her up from school, leaving her stranded on the campus’ front lawn after hours. Who arrives instead is Nathan (Egerton), a heavily-tatted skinhead whose cagey appearance and Polly’s reluctance to approach him hint at something predatory, especially since the car he’s driving has a smashed window and appears to have been hotwired. We learn instead that Nathan is Polly’s estranged father, released from years in prison, now picking her up in a stolen vehicle. Nathan has also brought along packed suitcases for them both, warning Polly she cannot return home and they must head south of the border. The gravity of Nathan’s situation becomes abundantly clear: he is an ex-member of Aryan Steel, a meth-dealing white supremacist gang, who has put out a hit on his life and the lives of his loved ones, having already eliminated Polly’s mother and stepfather in the process. Nathan’s abduction of Polly results in an Amber Alert being issued for her, and Detective John (Rob Yang) takes on the case. He sympathizes with the wanted father’s situation and sees his potential cooperation as a means to help bring Aryan Steel down. As Nathan and Polly embark on their journey, they rekindle what little of their relationship is left, out-maneuvering gang members and law enforcement along the way.
Tense encounters are frequent in the world of She Rides Shotgun, making Nathan and Polly’s journey a perilous one as they are chased by enemies on all sides. There’s a pitstop to see a woman named Charlotte (Odessa A’Zion), one of Nathan’s exes, who offers the pair shelter for the night while unwittingly letting an Aryan Steel enforcer into her home, resulting in a bruising confrontation between him and Nathan. The criminal enterprise is depicted as having an immeasurable reach, capable of pulling in multiple resources to make Nathan dead. (The leader of the gang also happens to be played by a memorable character actor, whose identity this author will not spoil here.) Also in relentless pursuit is John, who wants to bring Nathan to justice but also recognizes his status at the bottom of the gangland food chain, hoping the fugitive can be of some use. There’s a lot thrown the frazzled father’s way, with Rowland and his team peppering in a car chase and shootouts in order to keep the action moving along. It all threatens to be typical, gritty boilerplate stuff, but the twist here is that it’s all witnessed from Polly’s perspective, witnessing the pre-teen’s shedding of innocence as she becomes an unwitting accomplice to Nathan’s crimes, even engaging in violence herself to save her father’s life.
She Rides Shotgun is not out to reinvent the wheel, but it does make the most of the central relationship of its two leads, with Egerton and Heger each contributing strong work. The former brings considerable intensity to his role of a man with a darkened past, while Heger is completely credible in her part, generating an authenticity that situates her as the heart and soul of the film. She Rides Shotgun’s narrative eventually ventures down too familiar territory, which unfortunately lessens the impact of its potential gut-punch of an ending, but Egerton and Heger are not to fault here, and instead reflect a genuine bond of family ties and missed opportunities that help paper over the film’s more boilerplate elements.
DIRECTOR: Nick Rowland; CAST: Taron Egerton, Ana Sophia Heger, Odessa A’zion, John Carroll Lynch; DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate; IN THEATERS: August 1; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 0 min.
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