Posted in: Lionsgate, Movies | Tagged: film, lionsgate, she rides shotgun, taron egerton

She Rides Shotgun Star Reveals Why He Initially Joined the Project

She Rides Shotgun star Taron Egerton says the role’s raw emotion and Western feel made it unlike anything he’s done before.

Now playing in theaters, She Rides Shotgun brings Jordan Harper's award-winning crime novel to the screen with a mix of stripped-down violence and emotional complexity. Directed by Nick Rowland (Calm with Horses), the film centers on Nate (Taron Egerton), a recently released ex-con who's forced to go on the run with his 11-year-old daughter after both are targeted by a violent gang.

What unfolds is part survival thriller, part road movie, and part fractured family drama. Egerton's Nate is emotionally stunted and worn down, but desperate to keep his daughter Polly (played by Chloe Coleman) safe—even if he barely knows how to talk to her. Now, in a recent interview with Collider, Egerton opened up about what specifically drew him to the complex role.

She Rides Shotgun Star Says the Film is "Unlike Anything I'd Done Before"

"I like the kind of barren bleakness of the environment," Egerton said. "It's not like a movie filled with the trappings of modernity, you know, it's like stripped back, it's raw. It's got the quality of a Western. I like him for his humanity and his kind of inability to process anything that's happened to him and his complete emotional inarticulacy. And then, amidst all the chaos and carnage of what happens, he is able to find it in himself to love his daughter and to reforge that relationship after years of absence. And I don't know, well, that was just very moving to me and I just thought it was very unlike anything I'd done before."

Both critics and audiences have started to praise the film for staying true to the book's dark tone while still letting moments of tenderness work their way into the story. And obviously, much of the emotional weight rests on the evolving dynamic between Nate and Polly, whose bond is tested again and again throughout the film's two-hour runtime. With its harsh visual style and focus on emotional redemption through violence, She Rides Shotgun offers something different for fans of both crime thrillers and action-heavy dramas—and marks another sharp turn in Egerton's already varied career.

She Rides Shotgun is in theaters now.

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