Torn from the pages of A.J. Lieberman and Nick Thornborrow's graphic novel, Term Life aims to show audiences a story they haven't seen before. For starters, it's a father/daughter story at its heart, which isn't something that comes out of Hollywood very often. Furthermore, it's a dyed-in-the-wool crime drama, an unapologetic look at complicated relationships set in the very dangerous criminal underworld. Director Peter Billingsley looks to merge those seemingly disparate plots in this unpredictable yet touching thriller.

Vince Vaughn and Hailee Steinfeld lead Term Life as criminal and estranged father Nick Barrow and his daughter Cate. She's blissfully unaware of his existence until one of Nick's deals goes bad and Cate becomes a target in the violence directed at her father. Bill Paxton's Detective Keenan is the deliverer of said violence, thanks in part to his control over a group of corrupt cops. You might think you know how this one ends, but the twists, turns, and unconventional ending will likely prove you wrong.

During a visit to the set of Term Life along with a group of journalists, I had a chance to interview the film's director and cast in order to gain insight into what makes this picture so different. Get to know why the film's worth a watch by checking out the following interviews.

Vince Vaughn's Errant Father Figure

Well known for his R-rated and romantic comedies, Vaughn has also dipped into more dramatic, edgier territory from time to time. This role is definitely from the latter category:

"My character kind of plans crimes, he's not a guy who's executing crimes. He has a skill set of being able to look at locations and deduct what would be a good way to rob it. he then sells that off to people who would take that job. My ex-wife, great actress Cécile de France, they had a kid younger and kind of fell apart, and he's in a world that's not the most upfront. It's a strange situation where he has the capacity to care about his daughter but not really make changes in his life. He just kind of goes to what's comfortable, to where he feels confident. So he's watching her and keeping an eye on her, but not really engaging or getting involved. She really doesn't know that he exists; she's unaware of his presence.

 

"Then because of the turns that happen in the film, he sells a job that goes bad. There are some double sides to the job and some more complications. Jon Favreau plays the guy that usually gives me these jobs, Jimmy Lincoln, and neither of us are aware that there's another agenda behind the deal. She becomes unsafe at that moment."

It's at this moment that Nick knows his days are numbered, but that he might still be able to make amends and provide for his daughter. With that in mind, he takes out a life insurance policy with Cate as the beneficiary. The catch is that the policy won't become active for 21 days, so it's up to Nick to keep himself, and Cate alive. It's a premise that drove the graphic novel, which the movie aims to emulate:

"We're very true to the original. It's expanded upon and I think there are things that are accentuated, more details, but the actual engine and drive of the movie are the same."

As far as their take on this tale, they opted not to go the traditional route:

"This movie is more like Made, or Swingers, or The Break-Up. It's an R movie, it's an adult movie, it doesn't follow a traditional structure. It's not an obvious down-the-middle story. It's its own interesting kind of movie, and that's exciting to me."

Vaughn elaborated on what makes Term Life different:

"The story's unpredictable. It takes turns, and things happen that you don't see from studio films, both with who lives, who dies, and what takes place. On another level, I think it's honest and real to the psychology of what goes on with divorce and children and parents, the hurt and resentment. There's a lot of honest stuff where that's concerned. It's very interesting."

The other unique aspect is that it's a father/daughter story rather than a father/son story, something that Hollywood doesn't do very often. Vaughn found it:

"Really powerful. But it was this unique story, that was part of it, but it was really the material that, you realize when you saw this that maybe to that degree that you don't see those stories told a lot, that fact that they're in a crime world, that facet that things aren't one-sided, that there's fault on both sides, there's complications within the characters that you meet, it made it for something that feels very fresh. It's about something, which I think is nice."

Hailee Steinfeld's Cate Caught in the Crossfire

Steinfeld burst onto the scene in a big way in 2010's True Grit, going on to star in a number of high-profile gigs. We caught up with Steinfeld in between filming of a climactic action sequence that takes place in a rundown and dilapidated mill, a post-industrial structure that serves as the film's final confrontation. But before audiences get to that moment, they'll come to relate to the leads along the way:

"What I love so much about this story, in the extreme event that is taking place, the material and the dialogue that's between them is so honest. Every time you see them connect, something happens where you think, 'Oh she's gonna be the teenage girl and throw her hands up in the air and turn around and walk away,' and she does, but she always comes back. Up until this point you see them from across the room in a situation like this where, in a matter of seconds, your life can be taken away from you. It's all in their eye contact, their communicating with each other. It's a really beautiful thing that you can catch between these two people who are across the room from each other."

Steinfeld spent a good amount of time with the cast and director in rehearsals. They would spend half an hour dissecting a single scene, which led to moments of improv that were then worked into scene rewrites down the line. With all of this preparation, Steinfeld got a good handle on what her character was all about:

"Cate, as much as she's your typical teenage girl, she's kinda old-school in a way. She's raised herself. She is who she is because of herself. Her mom is in and out of rehab and she'll get unexpected phone calls from her hoping that she's doing well, and she's not. That's the absolutely biggest let down for anyone let alone your daughter. Things like that build her character in terms of strength and independence."

Cate carries those traits with her when her estranged father eventually shows up, bringing all sorts of danger with him:

"When Nick comes into her life, this is something I questioned a lot in the beginning. he shows up and all of a sudden they're on the run. This is what I was saying about the material being so honest; this girl isn't about to just fully give in, she's going to wait until the person comes up to the top of the stairs, she's going to wait until she sees the gun in his hand to be like, 'Okay, I'm with you.'

The heart of this story is really about Cate and Nick. The relationship is helped by Steinfeld and Vaughn's rapport, which was commented on by Billingsley and the cast. That chemistry allows for honest reactions that feel relatable:

"The way she handles the whole 'dad coming back into her life kind of thing' is so heartbreaking and so amazing how this happens in people's lives more often than you think. Things can happen and you can regret however much you want, but you never know how much time you have with someone and you never know how much it means until you don't have it."

Bill Paxton's Vicious Villain

Veteran actor Paxton, who puts Keenan into words better than I ever could, sums up his antagonist thusly:

"I'm playing an R-rated character, and my speech is a bit salty. He's got a lot of rage inside of him. He's got a very jaundiced eye on the world. He hates the world and everyone in it, and he just kind of goes from there."

But don't call Keenan a villain, lest you risk the wrath of Paxton. He has a particularly interesting viewpoint on the "bad guys", which is probably skewed a bit due to the fact that he's playing a pretty nasty piece of work:

"What I like about villains is that they usually have even more extreme convictions than protagonist. I see it more as protagonist/antagonist. I feel like they're meatier, they've got more passion, they're more committed to whatever their cause is. I find that rather heroic."

Paxton collaborated with director Billingsley and a former undercover cop to come up with the Keenan's background, which he used to inform his character:

"I came up with some ideas for the backstory. There's some bitterness from being the son of a cop who the system used and discarded. A lot of these cops who work in Vice, they get around gambling, dope, prostitution, there's a lot of money there. After a while it's like, 'I'm arresting this perp and his lawyer's bailing him out in his Maserati.' It's like, 'Fuck it, I'm gonna take a little for myself.'"

Villainy is a bit of a different look for Paxton. Though he toyed with a "bad guy" character on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Keenan is a different sort of villain. Paxton explains his interest in taking on a variety of roles:

"I've been looking to have more fun. I've played a lot of stalwart characters, but that's not where I came from. People know me from more rambunctious, flamboyant characters. So I've kinda gotten back to that. I came out of Big Love, and that was a great show and we're all really proud of it, but nobody knew what to do with me after that. Then I put on a bigass beard and people were like, 'Oh, he's an actor!' I haven't stopped working since Hatfields & McCoys."

Paxton also revealed that his son James also stars in the movie:

"Recently he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He auditioned and there was a nice part for it in him. He's the young man that Hailee Steinfeld meets when Cate and Nick are on the run, holed up in a hotel. While the noose is kind of tightening, there's that period where things are okay, there's not an immediate threat, but you get the feeling that it's a false paradise for them as they're getting to know each other. It gives Vince a father-daughter moment; does he intervene or does he let his daughter talk to this strange kid? It's a nice thing for him."

 

Do you interact with him?

 

"I don't on this one. If I did, I'd probably shoot him."

All joking aside, Paxton compares the tone of Term Life to that of a modern Western:

"The cop actioner or this man-on-the-run thing is very much a Western. That's what the Western became. The owners got rid of the horses but we kept the guns, basically. It's a stylistic picture with classic themes."

By way of trivia, Paxton fans may be interested to know that the veteran actor of more than 40 years in the biz originally worked in props, costuming and the art department when he was starting out in Hollywood at 18; Big Bad Mama was his first movie. He thinks all actors should have some experience working crew. His dad was a natural art director, so Paxton picked up a knowledge of art and design from him. Rather than sporting events, his dad took him to exhibitions and art museums; he remembers hearing his dad talk about lighting, and art, and illusion, and all of those lessons have stuck with him.

Director Peter Billingsley's Contemporary Crime Drama

An actor's director, and a former actor himself, Billingsley endlessly praised the talent and work ethic of his cast on Term Life. It was quickly apparent that everyone onboard the movie had the same goal in mind:

"We want to tell a very real story. At it's core, it's really an emotional story that has a lot of stakes to it, the relationship between Nick and Cate, and so you really want the action to not betray that. with those two actors, it's really been so real between them and the chemistry's been so magical. We really want the action to follow suit."

Another common theme throughout the day was the special attention paid to graphic novel artist A.J. Lieberman, who also wrote the screenplay for this. They praise his writing's visual style, which makes the translation to the screen all the easier. Billingsley also praised the source material's plot, which the movie aims to expand on:

"It's rare that you have a piece of material that has not only a great plot in what we had in this engine to try to stay alive for 21 days, with twists and turns and where the story goes to a satisfying place, but to have a genuine emotional story under that ... a lot of times that stuff is sort of ham-fisted in to try to create something to make the audience root for the people. But to have something equally satisfying, or more in many ways, you really have a special project. Your'e rooting for these two characters to get out of it. You're really beginning to like them on this journey but yet the plot twists are unfolding in a way that's satisfying. As a filmmaker, that's an exciting prospect for me."

Though the comic book is told in non-linear fashion, the movie takes more of a linear approach to storytelling.

"We felt that the story had enough strength and integrity on its own that we felt it could play out in a linear way." "It's an amazing father/daughter story set in this very satisfying crime world."

Billingsley, who has produced some of Jon Favreau's movies like the blockbuster Marvel picture Iron Man, compares Term Life's tone to that of the Robert Downey Jr. film:

Tonally, I think it's similar to this, where we very much treated non-action scenes in a very real way and we're, from the early Marvel stuff, kind of establishing that tone in a lot of ways, which had a little bit of levity.

The look of the film, however, is much less comic-booky, despite its source material:

We want to have a style but not be over-stylized.

Speaking of Favreau, whom Vaughn mentioned earlier by way of character description, Billingsley elaborated a bit more on his character in the film:

"Favreau plays a character who's a hoarder, that's all I'm saying about him. We got to build his apartment, which was fun. That was a pretty fun location."

Some trivia for you: Billingsley and Vaughn met when they starred in an after-school special called "The Fourth Man" about a high school student (Billingsley) who starts taking steroids in order to make the track team.

"I was like the brainiac who had a little speed but took steroids and got super-speed, and broke out into pimples. Nicole Eggert was my girlfriend and he was my best friend, and he was like, 'You're cheesing on me, man! You used to be so cool and now you're angry all the time!' And then I ran in the big meet and I had a heart attack. Then there was the four-page scene in the doctor's office. We met on that, in like 89, and we became good buddies. Like anything else, you take it seriously, it's still your work. As cheesy as it was, we were like, 'Hey, we're supposed to be best friends. We should grab some lunch and hang out and really get that shorthand so that it's captured on film. It turned out we liked the same music and the same stuff, so we just became friends after that."

Mike Epps' Good Cop Gone Bad

Lightening up the proceedings a bit is comedian Epps, whose wise-cracking character adds some levity to the film:

"My character's name is Darryl Mosley. I'm a part of the cop clan. Maybe background, but I think I started life as a good cop, maybe started doing a couple crooked deeds as I went on and got turned on to the corrupt life and started liking it, got in a little too deep. Kind of like a wise-cracker in the movie. Definitely, in the end, wasn't oblivious to what was happening, started really participating in the corruption."

Mosely is a cop under Keenan's command and despite the cop brotherhood, there are some betrayals that inevitably occur. So while Epps certainly has a knack for the comedic, it's a small part of this film:

"I don't really see a lot of comedy. Before the violence comedy, we'd crack jokes, but the tone of it is really, really straight drama. Not a dramedy at all. Straight drama. Real hardcore, corrupt, violent cop movie."

Look for Term Life in limited release and video on demand now!