‘She Rides Shotgun’ review: A brilliant young lead caught in a bumpy ride

She Rides Shotgun features one of the year’s best performances in newcomer Ana Sophia Heger, but the rest of the movie can’t match her depth.

There’s nothing more frustrating than a movie that gets one thing so right while missing the mark on nearly everything else. She Rides Shotgun, adapted from Jordan Harper’s Edgar Award-winning novel, manages to find its emotional anchor in a remarkable performance by newcomer Ana Sophia Heger — only to let her get lost in a story that’s too scattered to fully land.

Heger plays Polly, an 11-year-old unexpectedly pulled into the chaotic world of her ex-con father Nate (Taron Egerton) after a white supremacist gang puts both their lives in danger. What follows is part road trip, part survival thriller, and part fractured father-daughter drama. On paper, it’s a potent recipe. On screen, it’s more like an overstuffed plate — satisfying bites here and there, but too many competing flavors drowning each other out.

A breakout performance in need of a better vehicle.

Photo Credit: Lionsgate

The film’s emotional pulse should be the growing connection between Polly and Nate, and in flashes, it is. Heger’s quiet intensity makes Polly feel grounded and real even when the plot goes into overdrive. Whether she’s cautiously watching Nate dye her hair in a dingy motel bathroom or making a split-second, morally complicated decision during a tense confrontation, Heger conveys volumes with the smallest shifts in expression. For a child actor, it’s an unusually mature, layered performance — the kind that could’ve carried the whole film if it had the room.

Egerton delivers a convincingly hardened Nate, but the script keeps him so emotionally locked down that their relationship never fully breathes. The beats where we’re meant to feel a shift — from distrust to understanding, from strangers to something like family — feel rushed, as if the film is impatient to get back to its next chase sequence.

Action that overshadows emotion.

Photo Credit: Lionsgate

And there’s no shortage of those sequences. Director Nick Rowland stages them with a clean, gritty style and a steady rhythm. Unfortunately, the barrage of near-death encounters eventually dulls the impact. By the time Nate has survived his third major injury without slowing down, the sense of danger feels more like a formality than a true threat.

Subplots, including one involving a detective who recruits Nate for a side mission, only pull focus from the film’s real draw — watching Polly and Nate try to build trust on the run. It’s hard not to wish the story had stripped away the excess and doubled down on that dynamic.

The bottom line.

Visually, She Rides Shotgun nails the atmosphere — dusty highways, cramped motel rooms, and a persistent sense of being hunted. But when it comes to emotional payoff, it keeps circling the target without hitting it. Heger’s performance deserves a story that matches her depth. Instead, she’s left riding shotgun in a vehicle that never quite finds its road.

She Rides Shotgun is now playing in theaters. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Lionsgate. Read more articles by Alyshia Kelly here.