Whereas phrases corresponding to “pulse-pounding” and “nerve-racking” are tossed about far too regularly and capriciously in evaluations of thrillers, they’re altogether applicable to explain “She Rides Shotgun.” Directed by Nick Rowland (“Calm With Horses,” TV’s “Ripper Avenue”), the exceptionally well-crafted and neatly paced indie drama grabs you from the get-go and always feels able to explode even throughout sporadic moments of misleading downtime. However the beating coronary heart of the film is the father-daughter relationship at its middle that drives the story whereas lacing the sound and fury with coronary heart and soul.
Issues kick off on an ominous observe as 11-year-old Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) continues to attend for her mother to choose her up in school lengthy after her classmates and academics have departed. When a automobile ultimately does pull up, she’s not fully relieved to see that it’s her estranged father, Nate (Taron Egerton), and never her mom, behind the wheel. As he beckons her to hitch him, you possibly can’t assist anticipating the worst — particularly after Polly notices Nate has hotwired the ignition. However no, “She Rides Shotgun” has one thing much more alarming in retailer.
Solely steadily does Polly study, together with the viewers, that Nate, newly launched from jail, has arrived to retrieve her earlier than she’s grabbed by members of the Aryan gang that Nate “upset” (as he euphemistically places it) whereas behind bars. The unhealthy guys have despatched phrase all through New Mexico that Nate and everybody near him must be killed. Polly’s mother and stepfather have already been terminated, and now her dad is set to avoid wasting his daughter, if not himself, from grievous bodily hurt.
Working from a novel by Jordan Harper, who co-wrote the strong screenplay adaptation with Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, Rowland ratchets up the suspense with crafty and confidence, advancing the narrative and introducing secondary characters with appropriate swiftness and meticulous precision that by no means name undue consideration to themselves.
An early, seemingly random look by a cop named John Park (Rob Yang) investigating the double murder of Polly’s mom and stepfather pays off when the woman, initially fearing Nate is accountable for the killings, slips away from the seedy motel room the place she and her dad are hiding out and calls the cops. One factor results in one other whereas the stakes are raised, and Park additionally pursues an apparently unrelated case involving “the meth lab to finish all meth labs.” (Kudos to Yang for respiratory contemporary life into the cliché of a cop remaining calmly cheap when dealing with somebody aiming a gun at him.)
Not altogether surprisingly, the instances really transform carefully linked — by Houser (a scarily persuasive John Carroll Lynch), a transparently corrupt and fearsomely sadistic sheriff who runs the meth operation with members of the aforementioned Aryan gang.
“It’s Troy,” Park says of the stronghold he desires to infiltrate. “I want a horse.” And he’s completely prepared to saddle up a fugitive, wrongly accused or in any other case, to attain his objective.
Lengthy earlier than all hell breaks unfastened on the secluded meth lab, Rowland — with the invaluable help of editor Julie Monroe and DP Wyatt Garfield — amps the fun quotient with motion set-pieces each elaborate (a high-speed freeway chase that has Nate and Polly pursued by police) and intimate (a kinetic gunfight throughout the cramped confines of a motel room).
Repeatedly, Garfield impresses with potent compositions, notably in a scene that depicts father and daughter obliviously strolling by a subject within the foreground whereas, within the right-hand nook of the display, a distant automobile slowly bears down upon them. Later, Garfield ingeniously devises the knockout equal of a split-screen impact as Polly races alongside a desert path, whereas over the rise simply above her, a humongous shootout ensues.
As exhilarating as these and different moments are, nevertheless, they’d not be almost so impactful had Rowland not so successfully inspired our emotional funding within the relationship between Nate and Polly. Whether or not he’s affectionately dying her brown hair blond so she will be able to keep away from being acknowledged or educating her to wield a baseball bat to discourage a lot bigger attackers, Nate stays sincerely anxious about his daughter’s security, a trait Egerton compellingly expresses with out ever soft-pedaling the hard-boiled dangerousness Nate can flip on like a lightweight change.
Likewise, Polly comes throughout so toughened by her experiences that we by no means lose sight of the truth that that is an harmless baby repeatedly in mortal peril. It’s a difficult balancing act that Heger pulls off flawlessly. When her character has to sacrifice her beloved teddy bear for the larger good, it’s positively heartbreaking.
There are some joltingly humorous moments sprinkled all through “She Rides Shotgun,” virtually all of them flowing naturally from the generally cautious, generally heat, at all times credible relationship limned by Egerton and Heger. At one level, a service station minimart hold-up goes terribly and virtually fatally sideways when an sudden buyer opens fireplace. Nate barely makes it again to their automobile, the place he can’t assist grimacing when a deeply involved Polly remarks, “He shot you.”
“He did,” Nate calmly replies, reflexively downplaying the seriousness of the scenario. “Slightly.”
To not fear, although: He promised her he’d seize her a Snickers bar whereas committing his crime inside. And he did.
