My Cultural Diet

No offense to Taron Egerton and the rest of the cast, but She Rides Shotgun is worth checking out entirely for Ana Sophia Heger’s performance as Polly, a young girl who’s seemingly kidnapped by her estranged father — only to find herself in a far more dangerous situation. I considered bumping my review up to a full four stars for Heger’s performance alone, which is nuanced, heartfelt, and often heart-wrenching. One scene in particular at the movie’s end nearly had me in tears as I watched an ocean of emotions play across her young face. The rest of the film, however, just doesn’t quite measure up. There are moments when She Rides Shotgun seems to be angling for a mythic tale of blood and violence à la Cormac McCarthy. The opening narration certainly feels McCarthy-esque, and Wyatt Garfield’s cinematography infuses the film’s barren Southwestern vistas with portentous import. But it eventually settles into something more akin to a standard police thriller, albeit one involving meth labs and white supremacists. That doesn’t make She Rides Shotgun a bad movie by any stretch, but it could’ve been something even more interesting.

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