Images courtesy of Lionsgate
SHE RIDES SHOTGUN— 4 STARS
Embedded in the crime thriller trail of She Rides Shotgun, starring Rocketman and Kingsman actor Taron Egerton, is a delicate relationship between a daughter and the estranged father she hasn’t seen for years. Taron’s Nate McClusky, walking with a lean, mean, and tatted exterior, has been incarcerated for several years and, in the opening scene of the film, arrives one afternoon to pick up his 10-year-old daughter Pollyanna, played by the striking newcomer Ana Sophia Heger, from school when her mother is late. The girl knows of her father’s criminal past and raises immediate suspicion when he shows up out of the blue.
LESSON #1: SEEING THE WORRISOME SIGNS OF DANGER OR WRONGDOING— Seen through Polly’s eyes and nervously chewed cuticles, troublesome clues surround Nate’s unannounced arrival. The car he drives is unfamiliar, with broken window glass on the floor and wires exposed under the ignition and steering wheel. Most alarming of all, Nate has Polly’s suitcase packed to hit the road, and he won’t answer questions about where her mother is as they drive in the opposite direction from her home. She sees the man she once admired, but also his old tendencies. We, in the audience, multiply the fear that this may not be a tender reunion situation.
Sure enough, as TV and radio reports pour in, Polly’s mother and new boyfriend have been killed in their home, and Nate is the prime suspect. However, Nate assures his daughter that he’s been framed for the crime, intervening the way he has to save her from the same fate. He is on the run from an ordered “green light” death sentence of his own because of unseen strife and the affiliation sides he chose in prison. The criminal elements hunting him have ties everywhere, including people in high places and badges in their pockets amid the chilly New Mexico setting of She Rides Shotgun.
This brutal urgency forces Nate to go on the lam, trying to scrape together the few dollars he has for a run to the Mexican border. Shedding her initial worries, Polly finds heroism in her father, as he’s doing his best to protect her and restart a life together. It’s in this shared time on the road between an imperfect father and an impressionable daughter that She Rides Shotgun truly unfolds into an impactful drama with a strong familial streak.
LESSON #2: FATHERS AS TEACHERS AND MENTORS— While the conversation topics between father and daughter lean towards a bleak brutality to stay alive against insurmountable odds in She Rides Shotgun, there is a caring heart—hardened as it may be—underneath. For example, we watch Nate try and teach Polly how to swing a baseball to momentarily disable a would-be attacker. Fathers, even former criminal ones, are mentors and teachers. The effort from both sides isn’t clicking at first, but the effort and emphasis become endearing. They are trying hard for each other, because each other is all they have left as hopeful anchors in their respective worlds.
What really elevates this relationship are the small talk attempts at reconnecting that swell to become formative heart-to-heart conversations. Symbolically, seeing what he’s seen, his heart is black while hers is an innocent and feminine pink. Nevertheless, those colors bleed across both of them in affecting ways. When their pursuers arrive or risks need to be taken, the talk between them changes sternly, yet still sweetly.
LESSON #2: “CAN YOU DO THAT FOR ME?”— Parents try their best to prepare their children for the worst, and She Rides Shotgun poignantly uses a common request tactic to a different effect. Before a moment of risk where a child is going to witness a crime, Nick turns to Polly and instructs her to stay in the car, leave the engine running, keep the doors locked, and, lastly, be brave. He could have rattled that list off and bolted, but the script caps that with him asking, “Can you do that for me?” When parents do that, it’s normally a move gleaning care in trade for automatic compliance from the kid, without further explanation or slowing down to answer additional questions. How often have you used that line, or how often was it used on you back in your youth with an accompanying half-fake smile and batted eyelashes begging for a positive “Ok, daddy” kind of answer?
When that line is used by Egerton’s burdened man here, and it comes out a few times, it feels more meaningful and gravely important. It stings to hear because any moment could be their last together, right when they are finally united and growing closer from within. Moreover, this is not the life whatsoever Nick McClusky wants for his daughter, and it shows in his clenched dread and shed tears.
She Rides Shotgun puts these two through hell with slivers of hope pushing them to carry on. The connection built through the close quarters performances of Ana Sophia Heger and Taron Egerton to lift that sense of drama is exceptional. The camera rarely leaves Heger, making the point of view one of fragility, callousing over with experiences of toughness. Egerton has only hinted at playing a father, an absentee one, in Tetris a few years ago, in his prior roles, making this feature an impressive revelation and demonstration of his emergence and range as an actor.
Taron Egerton doubles down as a producer on this small-budget indie film, extending his clear sense of commitment. Absorbing the barren and beautiful New Mexico topography and seedy underbelly, director Nick Rowland, working on his sophomore feature film and first American film after 2019’s BAFTA-nominated Calm with Horses, selects and squeezes the right elements of tension from Jordan Harper’s source novel of the same name, adapted by Rowland and the duo of Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins of The Night House.
LESSON #3: PUSH UNTIL YOU ARE WEAK— There’s one more great line of mangled wisdom passed on from Nick McClusky that states “push until you are weak,” and it typifies this movie inside and out. Just staying alive is an act of moral compromise for these characters, requiring stamina not to be lost or drained by the ordeal. Likewise, shot in an astounding 25 days with the support of experienced stunt coordinator and second unit director Robert Alonzo (The Batman) in and around Santa Fe and Albuquerque with little margin for error or budget, She Rides Shotgun is a supremely intense movie of mettle, shoved towards endurance, that comes out stronger than ever conceived for one of the best films of 2025.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1328)
