Rating: R | Runtime: 120 minutes
Release Date: August 1st, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Lionsgate
Director(s): Nick Rowland
Writer(s): Jordan Harper and Ben Collins & Luke Piotrowski / Jordan Harper (novel)

You gotta feel weak to get strong.

Anyone who’s seen Nick Rowland’s Calm with Horses will be happy to hear he’s found another script with similar gravitas and complexity insofar as its familial love caught within a crime thriller premise. Adapted by Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski, and Jordan Harper (from the latter’s own novel), She Rides Shotgun again sees a father caught inside a localized web of circumstances that quickly spiral outside of his control. Because Nathan McClusky (Taron Egerton) is a good man—at least he’s always had the capacity for goodness despite the bad things he’s done in life. And just because he hasn’t been around or able, he’ll do anything to protect his child from the world he’s chosen.

Unlike Rowland’s feature debut, that child actually takes the lead here. We meet ten-year-old Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) as she’s waiting for her mother to pick her up after school. She’s justifiably frustrated about the time that’s passed, but she’s confident mom is simply running late … again. What she couldn’t have expected, however, is that the car speeding around the corner and beckoning her to get in is being driven by her father instead. Why? Because they haven’t spoken in years since he’s been in jail. Her trepidation isn’t therefore about the man holding open the car door, but the lack of clarity as to why he’s there at all.

While we can easily guess, our initial assumption won’t be entirely correct. Yes, Nathan is a killer, but he’d never hurt a loved. Not Polly. Not his ex. Not even her new boyfriend since doing so would ultimately hurt them in the process. No, his haste isn’t because of what’s already happened, but because of what’s still coming. Nathan has been green-lit and everyone even remotely close to him won’t just be at risk of getting hit by crossfire, they’ll also be targets due to his pursuer’s scorched earth, Biblical rage. This figure (John Carroll Lynch) doesn’t simply call himself the God of Slabtown because it sounds cool. He believes it.

The film is thus about Nathan and Polly on-the-run. He tries to find friends willing to help, but the group after him (the Aryan Steel) pretty much own the entire area. And those who aren’t on the payroll are too scared to act like it. It’s why Nathan is in this situation in the first place considering he isn’t a member himself. But his brother was and his protection inside was and most of those friends (like Odessa A’zion’s Charlotte) know little else. It’s so bad that the cops on his trail (Rob Yang’s John and David Lyons’ Jimmy) are even arguing about how to proceed: exploit Nathan to finally erase Slabtown’s meth empire or keep their heads down.

Our draw, however, is the father-daughter dynamic at the center. Here’s a young girl who knows her dad loves her, but also knows what he’s capable of doing. Does Polly therefore trust him implicitly and put herself at risk as a result or does she notify the authorities to try and save Nathan from himself? It really comes down to whether—through no fault of her own—she believes she’s dead either way. If her options for safety are to put her life in the hands of the police (who may or may not be dirty themselves) or her father, why not run with the one she knows will die to protect her? Maybe they’ll even get to know each other along the way.

Egerton is great as ever toeing the line between homicidal aggression and tearful empathy. His Nathan enjoys guiding Polly through pettier crimes to keep them in fresh wheels and money, but draws the line on letting her sink so far that she’d ultimately get lost following him like he did following his brother. As such, it’s Heger who must shoulder a lot of the emotional weight by responding to his mercurial shifts. Credit her and Rowland for finding the authenticity in a role that could have been one-dimensionally drawn as a pawn to her father’s whims. They instead show the reality that her age has trouble distinguishing when Nathan is angry with their circumstances rather than her.

She Rides Shotgun is very much a character piece because of this, but its narrative is also effective beyond providing them the room to shine. I love the choice to keep the God of Slabtown an anonymous boogeyman until the story demands a reveal (not of the actor, but why he is akin to God). The use of Yang’s Detective adding extra moral gray to already muddy waters as a mirror version of Nathan is a nice touch too. My only quibble is how the script injects Polly into the climactic shootout—both because of the ineptitude of those around her allowing it and the overt melodrama that results. Thankfully, Rowland and company stick the landing anyway.

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Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger in SHE RIDES SHOTGUN; courtesy of Lionsgate.