Clearest Blue

A good if pragmatic adaptation (spoilers)

In this film adaptation of Jordan Harper’s novel of the same name, Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton) is a recently released ex-con who’s been marked for death by Aryan Steel, a gang of meth-dealing white supremacists. Worse, the greenlight was issued not only against him but also against his family. Though he’s too late to save his wife, he ends up going on the run with Polly Huff (Ana Sophia Heger), the daughter he barely knows. 

In the book, Polly is very autistic-coded. There’s a great line in the book about how Polly thinks she’s from Venus, not literally, but metaphorically. The film tones down Polly’s quirkiness, like how she doesn’t move her teddy bear around like he’s alive as much. The film also makes her more morally pure. While she resorts to violence in both mediums, there isn’t an indication that she likes it in the movie.

Of course, the latter change is owed in part to Nate putting in way more effort to prevent his bad influence from rubbing off. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie comes after Polly tries to kill an Aryan Steel member who was trying to kill them. With tears in his eyes, Nate tells her he never wanted to see her pull a trigger again and that he’ll do that sort of thing for them.

In terms of plot, the movie starts broadly true to the book. Nate reunites with Polly when he picks her up from school. In the book, it happens when everyone is dispersing, while in the movie, Polly waits around for about half an hour as everyone, including the teachers, abandons her. That’s how the film establishes how isolated Polly is without the aid of an internal narration.

More Differences

The film diverges from the source material more and more as it goes on, though. Several key events from the book have been removed. Nate doesn’t strike back against Aryan Steel to make the greenlight too unprofitable to continue. Charlotte (Odessa A’zion) has a much smaller role and is barely recognizable due to being combined with Big Carla. Several other characters have been merged together as well.

In the book, the character who orders the greenlight against Nate is Crazy Craig Hollington, the president of Aryan Steel, who considers himself a god. At the same time, another significant antagonist is Sheriff Houser, a corrupt cop who runs a giant meth lab called Slabtown. In the film, the singular Big Bad of the story is Sheriff Samuel Houser (John Carroll Lynch), the God of Slabtown.

Lynch is one of the best casting choices the movie makes. Houser doesn’t have much screentime, so they needed someone with a lot of magnetism to hook you immediately. Lynch, being a talented character actor, does that. The best casting choices are the leads. Heger does a great job of bringing Polly’s very dark coming-of-age story to life. Edgerton likewise successfully transforms into a career criminal who has just gotten out of prison.

The book version of She Rides Shotgun is really good. The film version is really good. The only thing I’m lukewarm about is how it’s a three on the Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification. Of course, since so much of the book is internal, describing the character’s state of mind, I’m not sure they could have adapted it any other way. Whatever the case, I recommend both versions.