Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Perfect Assassins is a perfect example of a movie wasting a perfectly good premise. Poor writing, lackluster performances, and plot holes big enough to drive a car through left me wondering how a movie starts out so good, and ends up so bad.

Basic Plot

Andrew McCarthy plays Ben Carroway, an FBI profiler. In what has to be the most violent 10 minutes of a movie I have ever seen, Ben finds himself right in the middle of an assassination. The ruthless group of assassins have a couple things in common. Seemingly with no forethought at all, each kills himself the moment he's trapped. And, through some ridiculous luck, Ben figures out that they all went missing as children.

Aaron Lohr plays Billy, one of the assassins. Like the others, he tries to off himself when he's trapped, but alas, his gun is empty. Thus he's been captured and Ben is going to study him, to figure out what exactly is going on. But before Ben can get very far, Billy's older sister Lana (Portia de Rossi) who hasn't seen Billy since that childhood day when she looked away for a moment and Billy was snatched, does something extremely dumb, and unwittingly lets Billy escape.

The rest of movie revolves around Ben and Lana hooking up (because of course that's the very first thing the FBI agent and the bad guy's sister should be doing) and, when they're not hooking up, chasing the bad guy who's run off to Mexico. For kicks, they bring Ben's buddy Leo (Robert Patrick) with them. Why Mexico? Because that's apparently where his "handler", the evil Dr. Greely (Nick Mancuso) is hanging out and Billy seems "programmed" to return to him. Yes, it seems that Dr. Greely has been snatching kids and programming them into "perfect" assassins through use of psychological torture, raising them in isolation chambers similar to the electrified boxes that B. F. Skinner used to program animals 50 years ago.

Good stuff and bad stuff

OK - so the plot is decent enough. We have the right mixture of evil bad guys, guys who are bad through no fault of their own, and the good guys. We have car chase scenes and lots of action with cool weapons. So what went wrong?

There are so many dumb things in this movie, things that would just never happen in real life. For instance, the sister does something illegal that ends up letting the killer escape. As a result of her actions, people are killed. Does she pay for her crime for even one moment? No. No one even attempts to apprehend her. And, not once does she express any sort of regret for her actions, or feel anything for those that got killed as a result.

Another problem is the reliance on coincidence and luck to move the plot along. The way in which Ben discovers the missing children link is completely unbelievable. Furthermore, it seems that Dr. Greely played a part in Ben's past, too. In a few flashback scenes we're shown the connection, and they try to give us a bit of explanation, but it's never fully developed. I mean, we're supposed to accept that Ben actually knew about Dr. Greely and his experiments, through first hand experience, yet he hasn't gone after him before this? It just makes no sense.

Finally, the role of Leo, "the buddy" is just weird, to me. He's Ben's friend, but he's also a back-stabbing con man. Mostly what's annoying is the way he and Lana constantly bicker. Like two little kids fighting over a candy bar. Or in this case, fighting over Ben's attention. I guess it was added to bring some comedy to the script, but it didn't work, and, frankly, comedy had no place in this movie.

Overall

This is a movie you can easily skip, and not feel you've missed anything. The violence - especially in the first scene - is extreme. The performances nothing to rave about, and the plot holes huge.


Recommended: No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age