‘She Rides Shotgun’ Review – A Strong Cast Held Back By An Uneven Story

“A man made up of other men.” That’s how 11-year-old Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) describes her dad, Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton), in the opening voiceover of She Rides Shotgun. Adapted from Jordan Harper’s Edgar Award-winning novel of the same name, She Rides Shotgun follows Nate, who is freshly out of prison, and Polly on a desperate road trip through New Mexico. After Nate crosses a white supremacist gang, a kill order is placed on him and everyone he loves, including Polly. They move from backroads to motels, trying to stay ahead of the people hunting them. While Nate does everything he can to keep them alive, he’s also trying to rebuild trust and piece together a relationship with his daughter as they run, hide, and fight to survive. But he has spent his life around other broken men, and the only things he knows are what he learned from them.

The entire heart of the story centers on Nate and Polly’s relationship. There are these moments peppered in, between all the action, like Nate dyeing Polly’s hair in a motel room, that feel rushed and never quite hit. Their connection is never given enough space to percolate, so the transition from stranger to protector, or from fear to trust, which should feel satisfying and earned, falls flat. And it’s a shame because there’s an easy, natural chemistry between the two that makes them really compelling to watch together.

There’s no shortage of the aforementioned action in this story. From gunfights and betrayals to a gas station robbery gone wrong and a full-on highway chase, this movie throws everything you can possibly imagine at Nate. He’s shot, hit by a car, and beaten up by a cop (literally all in one sequence), and somehow he just keeps going. You really have to suspend disbelief here to get through it. Still, the action scenes are clean and well-staged. There’s a sense of rhythm to how it’s shot, and director Nick Rowland doesn’t overcomplicate things. Blanck Mass’s score does a lot of the heavy lifting too, helping build the tension and making every hit feel louder and sharper. But after a while, the stakes start to blur. It begins to feel like Nate is almost invincible, and when every injury is brushed off by the next scene, it’s hard to feel like there’s any real danger.

Performance-wise, Egerton brings a lot of weight to Nate, but he’s so emotionally closed off that we never fully understand what’s going on beneath the tattoos and grit. And when he does break, it feels like we’ve skipped some key steps getting there. Ana Sophia Heger also does a lot with what she’s given. She brings a kind of stillness to Polly that makes the character feel real, even when the story is moving so quickly. There’s a moment when Polly almost shoots a cop. She doesn’t hit him, but the fact that she even pulls the trigger says everything about what this journey is doing to her. That moment lands because we can feel what this is costing her. 

There’s also an entire subplot involving a detective (Rob Yang) who recruits (instead of arresting…) Nate to help him expose a meth empire. It’s meant to raise the stakes and give Nate his shot at redemption, but it feels like a detour from the story we’re actually here to watch – a father trying to figure out how to be one. John Carroll Lynch appears as the film’s final boss of sorts, and I love seeing him in any scene, but by the time we reach that big climactic standoff, things veer so far into “what is even happening?” territory that I had a hard time taking it seriously. 

The plus here is that Rowland clearly has a strong visual sense. The film feels gritty without looking washed out, and he knows how to create a sense of unease, even in the quieter moments. But for a movie that spends so much time in a car with two people, it never quite cracks who those people are when they’re not running. And when it’s trying to be emotional, it often feels like it’s straining for something it hasn’t earned. That opening line about “a man made up of other men” could’ve been a strong narrative thread for the story. Nate is trying to be someone real for his daughter, but he’s built from damage and defense mechanisms. The movie circles that idea but never really nails it down. And that’s kind of how the whole film feels, like it’s close to something powerful, but too caught up in the action to get there.

In the end She Rides Shotgun aims for emotional depth but gets lost in the action — circling something powerful without ever quite hitting it.

She Rides Shotgun will debut exclusively in theaters on August 1, 2025, courtesy of Lionsgate.