Movie review - She Rides Shotgun

She Rides Shotgun ** (out of 5) To set the stage correctly, despite the inferences the title suggests, this is a contemporary crime flick, not a western. An 11-year-old girl Named Polly (Anna Sophia Heger) is picked up from school by a sketchy-looking stranger (Taron Egerton), claiming her mom sent him to bring her home. She reluctantly gets in the car. But instead of taking her to the house, they hit the open road. We soon learn that Nate is her father, recently released from a prison term long enough for Polly not to recognize him. We next learn that Nate aligned himself with a skinhead gang in the Big House for protection. Not a place to fly solo, as we all know from a slew of other films, if not from personal experience. But once he was released from the Graybar Hotel, he tried to quit, rather than continue doing their bidding.

Nobody quits the violent, meth-making (among numerous other felonies) conglomerate without approval, which is never given. The prison faction is just a small part of a large, well-connected entity, including cops and politicians among its ranks of members and allies, covering an undefined, but apparently extensive chunk of the map. Nate is on the run because the vengeance payback for his disloyalty is not only to kill him, but everyone he cares about. They’ve already whacked his ex and her current beau, leaving Polly as the last one left to protect. That becomes his main mission.

There have been a plethora of bonding-on-the-run action flicks, ranging from buddies, to lovers to families. Many have ranged from effective to compelling. Not quite so, in this case. For a couple of seemingly interminable hours, we watch them scramble around an arid southwest landscape, desperately trying to wind up out of reach of the bad guys. All sorts of minions pursue them from one clash to the next. The pair steal cars, commit petty robberies and try everything they can to get far enough from them for safety. The chasers aren’t just card-carrying skinheads. Cops and ordinary civilians are tied in with the gang to pose threats from unlikely folk they meet along the way. Polly gradually learns to trust her dad, and picks up some survival skills in the process. All of this builds to the inevitable type of large-scale action sequence that is a climactic must for the genre. John Carroll Lynch heads the pursuers with a smugly cold determination worthy of a Bond villain.

On the plus side, seeing Welshman Egerton, best known here as Egsy from two excellent Kingsman movies, play a skinhead-adjacent American is intriguing. He looks and sounds the tattoo-laden part. Heger also fares well on the performance scale. The final battle is big, loud and bloody enough to reward one’s patience through the overlong, almost tedious, run-up. Director Nick Rowland makes good use of barren environs and seedy settings befitting the premise.

But the script by a trio of writers is severely lacking. The dialog – especially the talks between Egerton and Heger - is so bland and excessive that it dilutes the potential punch of their performances. There’s never one of those gratifying moments where they credibly click. Cutting 10-15 minutes of the blather would have resulted in a tighter, more suspenseful package. The film is further dinged by its illogical setup for the final confrontation. I can’t be more specific without spoiling it for those who choose to buy a ticket, or click on it upon home-market release, which shouldn’t be too long in coming. Bottom line – not as good as it could have been.

(She Rides Shotgun opens in theaters 7/31/25)