Perfect Assassins

When Dr Ben Carroway (McCarthy) is involved in an assassination where the killers commit suicide once trapped he finds that the killers have no criminal record. However they are all registered missing children and sets on a journey with one of the killer's sister (Portia de Rossi) and a mob hitman (Robert Patrick).

This is not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Usually anything with Andrew McCarthy in the lead is the equivalent of the kiss of death, but here he seems to have done alright here. The action scenes are fast moving and have a quota of tension, even the gunfights etc are exciting if a little far fetched at times. The main strength here is the plot, it starts out a little unbelievable but once it starts moving you forget the problems and see the bigger picture. The story holds several little twists and turns that hold the interest well, and the final resolution tidies up the problems of the unbelievable story by offering a solution that isn't that far-fetched (in fact depressingly possible). Nick Mancuso's Dr Greely is far too hammy and is bordering on a bad spoof of a bond villain, but happily he doesn't drag the surrounding film down with him.

McCarthy is pretty good as the hero and only the plot makes his job harder by making it all too personal and relying on too many coincidences. Patrick is as good as he usually is, albeit he's lumbered with the wise-cracking mobster but he still is entertaining. Rossi (best known for Ally McBeal) does well at first as the sister of a stolen child, but her sudden transformation into a gun-toting fearless warrior is a little too much to swallow.

Overall this is much better than you'd expect from this type of DTV film, the plot is a little far-fetched at times but the drama and action make up for the lack of realism.

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.

...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.

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

Given the names in the cast this movie was exceptionally bad. Poor acting, poor scripts, poor directing. Miss this one on purpose. The settings are about the only things, that have any redeeming quality. The weapons are nice but have unrealistic damage to objects also. I'd rather watch Lion King for the 10millionth time with the kids, than watch this one again.