★★★ (3 out of 4)
It’s not surprising that father-daughter stories strike a chord with audiences, especially when a mother is out of the picture. That’s certainly the case in “She Rides Shotgun,” now only in theaters, in which Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton) dotes on his 11-year-old daughter, Polly (Ana Sophia Heger). Nate is not overly sensitive. He’s a just-released ex-con on the run from cops and gang members who’ve already murdered Polly’s mom and stepdad.
In adapting the 2017 crime novel by Jordan Harper, director Nick Rowland (“Calm with Horses”) puts crucial emphasis on Nate and the daughter who grew up without him and doesn’t know what to make of him now as a tattooed skinhead. The author once accurately referred to his book as "'Paper Moon' with a body count.” So you’ve been warned.
The performances of Egerton and Heger could not be better or more attuned to the cadences of the heart. We’re with them all the way even when plot threads pop up that strain credulity to the snapping point.
It’s too bad that [Nate's] fatherly lessons are less academic and more like teaching Polly the art of clubbing a bad dude to death with a baseball bat.
Egerton, the Welsh performer who won a Golden Globe for playing Elton John in “Rocketman,” an Emmy nomination for the serial-killer series “Black Bird” and popular success in the James Bondish action-comedy franchise “Kingsman,” is an actor who deeply invests in his roles.
“She Rides Shotgun” is no exception. Egerton makes us see how much Nate wants to make up for lost time with his confused and conflicted daughter. It’s too bad that his fatherly lessons are less academic and more like teaching Polly the art of clubbing a bad dude to death with a baseball bat. Comes in handy, though.
I could have done without the backstory that has Nate bonding with white supremacist meth dealers in prison—he has to survive, you know—but when he kills one of them, the gang is less than forgiving, making it hard for Nate to go straight or even survive. And now there’s a little girl in the picture. Yikes!
That’s when “She Rides Shotgun” turns into a wild New Mexico road movie with car chases and shooting sprees with time-out for parent-child bonding. Nate’s not so bad. During a gas station robbery, he takes the time to grab Polly a Snickers bar.
For variety, Rowland throws in a mix of other characters, including a scary-sadistic John Carroll Lynch as a sheriff born without the gene for kindness and a terrific Rob Yang as hard-nosed Detective Park who gives Nate a break in exchange for helping him bring down the meth-heads of Aryan Steel.
Still, “She Rides Shotgun” works best when the bullets stop flying and we just observe Nate and Polly find a kind of peace in each other. They laugh, too, especially when Nate dyes Polly’s hair bright orange to avoid detection. Rowland never hits the pedal too hard when its comes to cornball stuff, letting action grow out of character.
You can probably see where all this is heading, but as long as Egerton and Heger are on screen, which is almost always, we never lose our rooting interest. And the defiant little dance Polly does near the end is a heartbreaker. So’s the movie.