Producers: Brad Weston, Collin Creighton, Nate Matteson, Hiro Murai and Taron Egerton   Director: Nick Rowland   Screenplay: Jordan Harper, Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski   Cast: Taron Egerton, Ana Sophia Heger, Rob Yang, Odessa A’Zion, David Lyons, Travis Hammer and John Carroll Lynch   Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: B-

Nate McClusky, the character Taron Egerton plays in this adaptation of Jordan Harper’s 2017 novel, is a far cry from Eggsy, the dapper, elegantly clothed and groomed fellow whom the actor became in the “Kingsman” movies of 2014 and 2017.  He’s a beefy quasi-skinhead ex-con, covered in tattoos, fleeing a bunch of murderous white supremacist pursuers he fell out with in prison.

Yet he’s not really a bad guy.  The film starts with him screeching to a stop in front of the school where his pre-teen daughter Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) is nervously awaiting the arrival of her mother, who’s late picking her up.  Nate’s driving a stolen car, as the wires dangling from the ignition prove, but he seems genuinely concerned about persuading her to get in the passenger seat.  He should: his pursuers have apparently killed her mother, and may have the girl on their list too.  Father and daughter are soon speeding away, and that night in a motel he cuts and dyes her hair to make her less recognizable.  He also teaches her how best to use a baseball bat to disable an attacker. 

The rest of the movie, predictably enough, is about how they bond as they eventually travel into a crystal-meth Heart of Darkness deep in the New Mexico desert, a drug kingdom called Slabtown presided over by corrupt Sheriff Houser (John Carroll Lynch), who rules with an iron fist through his obedient police force and army of brutal mercenaries.  He’s also a sadist who calls himself God and relishes carving open a Mexican cartel drug mule his men have captured and hung by his wrists from the ceiling.  Eventually Nate will wind up in a similar position.

But before then father and daughter will run a gauntlet of danger.  Nate’s decision to seek shelter with old girlfriend Charlotte (Odessa A’Zion) is undercut by her own ambivalence about helping them and the self-centered motives of the men in her life.  A need for cash induces Nate to rob a convenience store, while Polly watches from their car, but the heist is interrupted by a guy in a cowboy hat who pulls out a gun of his own and exchanges fire with Nate; Nate still remembers to grab the Snickers bar Polly has asked for, despite getting winged.  And when they reach Houser’s domain, both are threatened when one of the sheriff’s cops tracks them down.

The most important person they encounter along the way, however, is John Park (Rob Yang), the detective assigned to track them down.  Park’s initial focus is on rescuing Polly from a man considered a dangerous kidnapper who might have killed the girl’s mother, but as his investigation proceeds he’s convinced not only that Nate, despite his long rap sheet, is innocent of that crime, but could be key to bringing down Houser’s empire—something he’s obsessed with accomplishing.  So Park convinces Nate to become his ally in return for promises of help in starting a new life for him and Polly.  Unfortunately even his own partner (David Lyons) can’t be trusted in so corrupt a world: the finale, a mini-war between SWAT-clad cops and the Slabtown defenders, with Houser himself manning an automatic rifle with an apparently inexhaustible supply of ammunition, seems to go on forever.

The atmosphere of “She Rides Shotgun” is unrelievedly grim, and the settings gritty and bleak, courtesy of the New Mexico locations, John P. Goldsmith’s production design and Wyatt Garfield’s cinematography, with its palette drained of color; the brooding score by Blanck Mass adds to the dark tone.

And yet the intensity of feeling that grows between father and daughter adds humanity to the harsh world the film depicts, because of the expert performances from Egerton, who inserts elements of paternal affection and fear in Nate’s tough-guy persona, and especially young Heger.  With its emphasis on action and suspense, Nick Rowland’s film stints on the evolution of Polly’s character—she starts out, after all, as a scared kid who, from the blood on Nate’s clothes and car, must initially believe that her estranged father killed her mother, and so calls the police for help at the first opportunity; her inner struggle to accept him as her protector must be profound.  Yet the film leaves it to Heger to convince us of a transformation that it presents in brief, almost throwaway strokes.  Amazingly, she does so; either she’s an extraordinarily gifted child actor, or Rowland an extraordinarily gifted director of children.  Either way, Heger’s amazingly convincing, and the chemistry between her and Egerton, whose Nate ultimately proves his own transformation in an act of self-sacrifice, is palpable.  Heger even pulls off a coda whose apparent hopefulness is, through her body language, shot through with uncertainty.

Among the supporting cast the standouts are Yang, whose laid-back, emotionless detective is the model of a man of no illusions, so dedicated to the task at hand that he’s willing to sacrifice almost everything to bring down what’s in effect his personal White Whale, and Lynch, whose Houser is a truly maniacal, evil character, one far removed from the likable guy who gruffly consoles the heroine in the recent “Sorry, Baby.”  But A’Zion gives the conflicted Charlotte some nice shading despite her limited screen time.                 

One wishes that “She Rides Shotgun” could have given more attention to the development of the relationship between Nate and Polly and less to that final gun battle, which as staged by Rowland and edited by Julie Monroe is absurdly repetitive and overdone, doing Lynch no favors in the process,  But despite its flaws overall this is a tense little action thriller with a compelling emotional core, bolstered by performances that elevate what’s essentially a B-movie plot.