SHE RIDES SHOTGUN - Mark Reviews Movies

She Rides Shotgun, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 31, 2025

Director Nick Rowland's She Rides Shotgun functions as a tough, unforgiving thriller. Its heart, though, is with the story's two main characters. One is an estranged father, who comes to realize how far he'll go to protect the child he hasn't seen in years, and the other is a young daughter, who learns tough lessons about love and life while on the run from the police and a murderous gang.

The plot here, based on a novel by Jordan Harper, is nothing unique, although its various mechanics and layers of villainy give the story a more helpless air than one might anticipate from an extended chase. After all, Nathan (Taron Egerton), the father, is wanted by the cops, on suspicion of getting out of prison and immediately murdering his ex-wife, and that gang, which joined in order to survive while incarcerated and betrayed to be released from prison. He can't go to the cops to protect him from the gang, because he'll almost certainly be arrested and sent back to prison, and there's nowhere for him to hide from the criminals, really, because their reach is long and their intimidating influence is powerful.

Undoubtedly, this screenplay, co-written by the author with Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, could have succeeded with just these elements at play. What makes the material stand out as more than simply a well-constructed thriller, however, is that it makes room for and takes time with Nathan and his 8-year-old daughter Polly (Ana Sophia Heger), as their unexpected and desperate reunion allows each one to see the other for who they really are.

For all Polly knows, her father isn't a good man when he suddenly arrives to pick her up from school one day. All she does know about him is that he has been in prison and that her mother probably wouldn't be happy for him to show up unannounced. Initially, this looks to us like a terrible situation for the girl to be in, since Nathan has blood on him, has stolen a car, and tries to hide from some passing police cars as he drives away from the school with his daughter. Egerton's key qualities as an actor are vital to this character. He can be cool and tough, which makes us wonder what he has done to be here, but also reserved and warm, which lets us know that appearances aren't all there is to Nathan.

As for Heger, her performance here is quite the feat for an actor, regardless of age. Take the sequence in which she discovers what has happened to her mother—as well as the mom's boyfriend, who was also there when the gang arrived for revenge—and that the father she has barely known in her life—but who is asleep in the motel bed next to her—is the prime suspect in his ex-wife's murder.

In that moment, Polly has to process, not only the shock and grief of the violent devastation of her family, but also what she's going to do about her father. Should she believe what she has heard about the man for her entire life and what the police are saying about him now, or should she trust her instincts and her impression of a man who doesn't seem like the picture of the one others have made of him? The whole emotional, mental, and psychological processes of this scene have to be believable, or else, the entire narrative collapses right there. Heger ensures we witness and understand every moment of her thinking and decisions.

The ensuing plot, obviously, has the father and daughter on the road, avoiding cops, including the persistent Det. Park (Rob Yang) who is leading the investigation/manhunt and starts to accept that Nathan is a not-so-innocent bystander in the murders, and gang members. One encounter with the latter category, after Nathan seeks sanctuary with former lover Charlotte (Odessa A'zion), reveals that the gang's targets aren't limited to him and his ex. They also want to kill Polly, because Nathan's betrayal of the gang was so personal to its leader. The crime boss, by the way, is played by John Carroll Lynch, who makes a frighteningly ruthless impression in only a handful of scenes—although one of them has him going right to the source of where a thieving drug mule has hidden a stash.

Again, this might have been enough, but the filmmakers actually care about what this relationship entails and how these characters grow as much as the plotting, if not more so. The stop at Charlotte's, for example, leads to a conversation between Nathan and Polly about love, because the daughter has believed that her father only loved her mother.

The stakes of the chase, the apparent hopelessness of the situation, and the need to make up for lost time seem to make both parties more honest than they might otherwise have been. Polly wants to know things that are beyond her years. Knowing that he probably doesn't have a lot of time with his daughter, Nathan is frank about who he is, what he has done, and what he's willing to do—not only to defend his daughter's life, but also to protect her innocence amidst circumstances in which death and killing are likely inevitable.

The character work and development can't remain the focus, obviously, because there are actual chases, standoffs, shootouts, and a convoluted plan to make things right with which to deal. She Rides Shotgun, though, never loses sight of its central relationship and the evolution of its characters through it all. It's strong enough that we almost want a clichéd moment to happen in the final shot, if only for some source of comfort, but even then, this film is too honest for that.

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