Term Life

A thieving father kidnaps his daughter to protect her from Mexican gangsters. It’s like Taken, but backwards and terrible. Starring that guy from Old School.

The advantage of making a film, as opposed to a book, is that you are allowed to show rather than tell. Term Life proceeds to ignore this fact and instead presents an hour and a half of pure narration. Of course this narration is essential, as it delivers 80% of the plot ...Did I say plot? I meant Rain Man-esque tips on how to rob bakeries, though these ‘tips’ are as mundane as “you need a way in and, more importantly, a way out”. Needless to say it’s not all as exciting hearing about what you could otherwise watch; it’s like having an annoying friend sitting beside you explaining every plot point.

When the film isn’t delivering its ear-load of weak plot, it provides a strange amount of broken family subtext. It’s an action film for middle aged, single fathers who miss their families and are still coming to terms the emotional hardship that divorce causes. The three main characters can be summarised as fatherly figure who has seen it all, actual father that is borderline autistic in terms of emotion, and angst-y teen daughter rebelling against the father that abandoned her. It’s like listening to an audio book on cliché character creation.

I will find you, and I will bore you.

Given that the film is delivered mostly verbally it also tends to move at something of a breakneck pace. A scene only takes as long as the narration takes to explain it, then it often jumps to an unrelated scene. It’s entertaining in the way that a burn might be, except burns heal and this film will never get better with age. With lines such as “Your Dad fills a lot of holes Kate”, and “my whole life I’ve been watching her” (spoken by the father about his daughter), who could resist a nice scalding third degree burn to the eyeballs.

The acting is average at the best of times, though upon further investigation I found that it was produced by WWE, as in the remarkably popular wrestling organisation. How the pieces all fall into place. Oh also the title just straight up doesn’t make sense. Life Sentence, Life Term or Heisty, Heist, Heist Family Issues would all have been more relevant.

As an audio book this film might warrant a passing grade, but due to it’s poor structure, plot delivery via excessive narration and all round terrible acting it warrants a 3/10 divorce papers.