A classic scenario: dangerous man and innocent kid on the road, her presence eventually reveals his soft side, as much as he tries to hide it. He learns from her and finds a purpose in protecting her. Some shit goes down and he tries to find redemption and we have a hard time not feeling something for him. In the case of SHE RIDES SHOTGUN (based on the book by Jordan Harper), the kid is Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) and the man is her father, Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton, CARRY-ON). When her mom doesn’t show up to pick her up after school, and her dad shows up all frazzled, she’s definitely scared. Asks if he’s supposed to be there. Yeah, he got out, he says.

Man, this starts out dark. We figure out before she does that her mom and stepdad just got murdered. We assume Nate did it and now he’s kidnapping her. He’s in a hotwired car (all he can afford right now, he says) and trying to lay low at a cheap hotel by the airport. When she sees the double homicide on the news he tells her it wasn’t him, it was this prison gang that’s after him, that’s who he’s running from and trying to protect her from. Too late though, she already called the task force phone number. So she tells him they have to go.

He cuts and dyes her hair (using actual bleach!) and somehow it turns out good. She loves it. She wouldn’t know the reference, but she looks like baby Patricia Arquette. He warns her about people with tattoos of blue lightning bolts, teaches her where to hit somebody with a baseball bat. Says that’s a better option than hiding under a bed. They stay for a little bit with Charlotte (Odessa A’zion, HELLRAISER 2022), who doesn’t seem happy to see him, but is sweet to Polly. But that doesn’t work out.

Polly has a conscience, and Nate doesn’t want to corrupt her. When she fires a gun to protect him it devastates him. She shouldn’t have to do that. But in his desperation he gets her involved in all kinds of terrible shit. Goes into a gas station mini-mart promising to get her a Snickers, also does an armed robbery. He doesn’t tell her, doesn’t expect her to be lookout, but she honks the horn when she notices another customer (stuntman Conrad R. Padilla) coming, seeing what’s happening, pulling a gun. That’s a hell of a scene because the guy doesn’t just protect the clerk, he follows Nate into the parking lot and keeps firing. Okay bud, you’ve gone from “Good Samaritan” (like the end credits call you) or “good guy with a gun” to “guy carrying a gun just praying to have a chance to kill a human being.” Enraging and completely believable. Also just the type of shit I love in a crime story because it’s not the conflict between cops and robbers that goes with the territory, it’s some other chaotic mess that happens to pop off and complicate things. That’s the good stuff.

There are also cops though. Detective John Park (Rob Yang, THE MENU) is the one who talked to Polly when she called the number. He’s on their trail, has figured out on his own that Nate didn’t do it, that it has to do with the Aryan Steel gang, thinks he can use Nate to finally get to them, a pet cause of his. His partner Jimmy (David Lyons, STORM WARNING) doesn’t want to get involved, thinks they’re untouchable. They run a big trailer park meth lab called Slabtown. When Park calls that area’s sheriff Houser (John Carroll Lynch, FACE/OFF) to ask him some questions we get a pretty good hunch that guy’s the boss of it all. It’s Lynch with a big handlebar mustache and looking scary in a different way than usual. Not just ZODIAC creepy. More of a tough guy.

The climax demands a little more suspension of disbelief than the rest of the movie. Even if Park were a worse cop I’m not sure I believe him bringing a little girl to a raid on a drug lab and just telling her to wait in the car. And then for her to sneak off, go right to where her dad is strung up and successfully evade a vicious guard dog to save him… it’s alot to go along with. But I suppose much more exciting than if she had just waited like she was supposed to. It’s okay – after the epilogue I forgave everything.

That young actress is almost too good. It’s hard to look at those sad, curved eyebrows for so long. It’s heartbreaking. For me this was a real cryer at the end. Such a complicated mix of emotions. This is a good crime thriller, but it ends like a great one.

Egerton has really earned my respect. I liked him when I first saw him in KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE, I liked LEGEND and I’m one of the only people who thought his ROBIN HOOD was dumb enough to be fun. But I still didn’t see him coming. I had no idea he would be a transformer type actor until he was Elton John in ROCKETMAN. That surprised me. And then he was a good Australian psycho in the Charlize Theron nature survival thriller APEX (already erased from the world’s memory because it was a Netflix movie). Here he got buff and has these ugly little tattoos and really seems like a guy who’s in a permanent state of swinging back at someone punching him in the face. Then to see that guy open up enough to frantically ask his daughter about herself, realizing he barely knows her and might not have much longer to try. It’s a sore bruise of a movie, in a good way.

SHE RIDES SHOTGUN is directed by Nick Rowland (CALM WITH HORSES), screenplay adapted by Ben Collins & Luke Piotrowski (SUPER DARK TIMES, THE NIGHT HOUSE, HELLRAISER 2022) and Harper, revised by Rowland.

I bet some of you have read the book, or other ones by Harper. I was thinking about getting his new one, A Violent Masterpiece. Intriguing title. Let me know what you think of his stuff.