Perfect Assassins

Story: After the dignitary he is guarding is assassinated, FBI profiler Ben Carroway captures one of the assassins, the others committing suicide. Discovering the assassin was reported missing as a child, Ben heads to Mexico along with the killer's sister and a friend, where he uncovers a plot to turn kidnapped children into hard-core killers. What starts off as an intriguing concept quickly becomes a formulaic action film. The beginning is expertly done, with a shootout in an alleyway & the assassins killing themselves is a plot point that is not usual fare for an action film. The extended chase scene is reasonably exciting. But at the point the characters reach Mexico, the film falls into a formulaic revenge plot. Don't get me wrong, the behavior modification scheme is interesting, but the film fails to use it in a novel way. As for the acting, Andrew McCarthy does well with his role while Robert Patrick has a lot of fun playing the shady Leo, stealing the limelight from his fellow actors. Grade: C+ Review by M. K. Geist

I ended up watching this movie because well there was nothing else on and I recommend watching paint dry, grass grow, anything in fact other than this movie. The premise is intriguing enough in the beginning, there are assassins running around, and they are tied to this weird behavioral scientist. But before you get to the conditioning, you get perhaps the worst car chase in history, they appear to be going the speed limit, not really riveting action. The action scenes are boring, the plot relatively see through, you can guess most of what will happen. The ending however is truly ridiculous, as everything comes together in what has to be the stupidest conspiracy story ever. My recommendation don't waste your time.

I believe that I just watched this movie on HBO (11/13)under the name "Perfect Assassins" The following is the copy from the DirectTV description:

Other. Andrew McCarthy, Robert Patrick, Nick Mancuso. (1998) Ruthless terrorists battle an FBI specialist and may be linked to his past. (AC,AL,V) Not Rated - Content

Basically, someone has been turning children into killers and conditioning them as animals in some bizarre experiment. Nick Mancuso also stars in this movie as the antagonist, a psychotic behavioral scientist. Quite a few implausible scenes if you could buy into the premise itself. Some decent action but all in all not a very well done movie.

It's something to watch when you find you have 50 channels and nothing on. That's how I found it. Then I got curious about the leading lady. She now plays Nell on Ally McBeal. When I realized who she was, that pretty much served as the only excitement this movie offered.

There was a vague effort at an X-files-esque conspiracy ending that failed miserably. Still nothing is as bad as "Yor-The Hunter From The Future", my vote for worst picture ever.

...from the train, and almost all the way through the part where Ben (Andrew McCarthy, playing the FBI agent) is telling Billy's (Aaron Lohr, playing the really bad guy) sister (Portia de Rossi, playing the sister) about his mom dying because he was put in a room with an electric doorknob. Now, this was my second time viewing the movie. The first time it was on I wasn't able to pay much attention to it, but was able to catch the premise, and I made a mental note to watch it again and pay attention. Big mistake! Sure, it starts out OK, but when Billy's sister gets in there, it becomes completely implausible. In a matter of minutes we get... 1) FBI agent enters secure room to interview really bad guy and sister just walks in. 2) FBI agent gets in a pushing match with sister, totally ignores really bad guy, who escapes. 3) FBI agent jumps into car to chase really bad guy and sister gets in the back. 4) FBI agent gets into helicopter to chase really bad guy and sister gets in it. 5) FBI agent has a choice, chase running really bad guy or help fellow agent stuck in truck on railroad tracks with train coming. Sister says screw fellow agent and chase really bad guy.

A disappointingly routine action thriller with an interesting premise in that conditioning - used in laboratories to shape the behaviour of animals, the most famous case being that of Pavlov's dogs - is used on children to transform them into ruthless murderers. Unfortunately the premise is only a set-up for some stale antics involving a captured killer, and his subsequent escape and chase. By the end of the film we've gone through the run-of-the-mill confessionals and surprises but the film only impresses us during the frenetic action sequences, which are well-choreographed for a television music and enlivened by some pulse-pounding music. The opening in particular is a real showstopper with a public assassination attempt followed by an explosive double suicide. There's also some cool antics involving a train and a helicopter which makes for one hell of a cliffhanger.

Unfortunately the film becomes less interesting as it goes along, packed full of plot contrivances and attempts at mood which aren't too successful. It ends in a final shoot-out which really isn't that interesting and a bit of an anticlimax. The D-grade casting doesn't help this film much either. Firstly we have the bland straight-to-video man Andrew McCarthy as the hero, Ben Carroway. No matter what role he plays, good or bad, McCarthy just seems to be so damn boring in every film he appears in that you can't care less about him. The much better and under-appreciated actor Robert Patrick (TERMINATOR 2) is relegated to a useless comic-relief irritating sidekick type role when in reality he would have been much better as the hero. Portia de Rossi makes for a sassy and beautiful love interest/female lead but her character is given nowhere to go and extraneous to the plot. Old-timer Nick Mancuso is the mad scientist bad guy but he plays it low-key, with none of the overacting you might expect from the role. A BREED APART is only worth watching if you're really stuck for something on telly, as the couple of good action sequences it does have are surprisingly well-staged, but as a film it's a failure.