Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Nick Rowland
Starring: Taron Egerton, Ana Sophia Heger, Rob Yang, John Carroll Lynch, Odessa A'zion
Adapted from Jordan Harper's novel, She Rides Shotgun is the latest entry in the thriller sub-genre that pairs off a hardened criminal with a precocious kid. There are several ways to play this: for grit (John Cassavetes' Gloria), for sentiment (Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World), or for over the top thrills (Luc Besson's Leon). She Rides Shotgun opts for a combination of all three.
Waiting to be picked up by her mother after school, 10-year-old Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) is surprised when she's instead collected by her estranged father Nate (Taron Egerton). Newly released from prison, Nate has been targeted by a white supremacist gang he made enemies of inside. They've already killed his ex-wife (Polly's mother), but he keeps this detail from Polly and takes her on the run. Nate cuts and dyes his daughter's hair, and seeks help from old friends, but he quickly finds that nobody can be trusted. The assassination of his family has been "green lit" by a powerful and mysterious meth baron known in the underworld as "the God of Slabtown," as though he were some post-apocalyptic warlord in the Mad Max universe.
Also hunting Nate is police detective John Park (Rob Yang). Surrounded by crooked cops who seem to be on the God of Slabtown's payroll, Park is in a similar position as Nate, unable to place his trust in any of his colleagues. But Park just might be Nate and Polly's best hope of survival.
Director Nick Rowland's film follows the same path of character development as its aforementioned predecessors. In all of these films the adult criminal softens in the company of the kid, while the child hardens. That's what we get here, but what makes the formula work once again is just how hardened Nate is at the beginning of the film, and how delicate Polly is at that point. Nate is initially quite a despicable figure, and we have many questions regarding his past and what he might have done to earn his many tattoos. At first we're not sure if he abducted Polly to save her life or to save his own skin, perhaps believing he's less likely to be gunned down by the cops or mobsters if he has a child in his arms. But as he spends time with his daughter it becomes clear that he genuinely loves her. At the same time the movie doesn't make excuses for him, and there is no sense that he is dogged by regret or seeking redemption. Nate is a bad man, and he's willing to do bad things to save his kid.
Egerton got seriously jacked for the role, but his physique isn't that of the lean leading man we've become used to in an era when even comedy actors have six-packs. He has the bovine build of a man who added muscle in prison. He's not built for speed but for taking hits. The British actor is surprisingly convincing as a dangerous man with a violent past, and that Nate maintains his macho facade so well for so long makes it all the more touching when he allows himself a tender moment with his daughter. In her first movie role, Heger is a sensation. Her every reaction plays like that of a confused kid rather than a groomed for stardom professional child actor. Sometimes Polly will laugh at things that really aren't funny, and this greatly helps to humanise her as a kid who is simultaneously scared and happy to be on a wild adventure with her father.
She Rides Shotgun is set in an over-the-top reality of gunplay and car chases, but Rowland's gritty direction and the lead performances keep it grounded and relatable. There's a climactic mass shootout that might have taken the film into a more cartoonish direction (see this year's Americana), but Rowland wisely shoots it as a scene of violent chaos rather than choreographing it for thrills. We worry about Polly getting caught in the crossfire, either taken out by the villains or some nominal allies. For Polly, this is a world where even the adults who claim to care about her the most place her in harm's way.
She Rides Shotgun is on Prime Video UK from November 26th.
