Perfect Assassins is a 1998 thriller Made-for-TV Movie directed by H. Gordon Boos.
FBI agent Ben Carroway is at a diplomatic meeting when the diplomats are assassinated. During the chase, all the assassins except one, Billy Collins, kill themselves. Curious, Carroway looks into the FBI's records and finds that the survivor disappeared when he was five. He then teams up with the assassin's sister, Lana, and his ex-hitman buddy, Leo Benita, to figure out what's going on.
This film contains examples of:
- Arch-Enemy: Greely is this to Ben, as the man responsible for his mom's disappearance.
- Behavioral Conditioning: Psycho Psychologist Dr. Samuel Greely uses operant conditioning to create assassins who kill without hesitation, first others and then themselves upon completing their missions.
- Big Bad: Dr. Samuel Greely, the Psycho Psychologist running the assassin program.
- Cowboy Cop: Ben completely disregards FBI regulations by stealing a helicopter, taking a civilian with him, to chase a suspect.
- Evil Plan: Dr. Samuel Greely seeks to prove his theories on human conditioning by torturing children to become assassins.
- Hate Sink: Dr. Samuel Greely is a Psycho Psychologist who seeks to perfect the conditioning of humans. To achieve this, he kidnaps children and locks them in a cage where they have to shock themselves to get food. The only human interaction allowed to Training from Hell that involves vicious beatings by grown men, which Greely laughs at as he watches. He then sends the kids on assassination missions where they kill themselves if they succeed. If they fail, he sticks them back in their box to stew in their trauma.
- Heel–Face Turn: Leo decides to help the people he sold out after Greely tries to kill them, thus violating their deal.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Billy jumps in front of Lana so she doesn't get shot.
- Kick the Dog: Samuel Greely is a dog-kicking machine, operating an assassination business by abducting children and torturing them into being human attack dogs that kill themselves upon failure. Any that fail are locked in the box to trigger their trauma, and Greely is shown to laugh when watching his men torment the kids.
- The Mole: Leo is hired by Greely to bring Carroway to his lair.
- Psycho Psychologist: Greely takes the experiments
of B.F. Skinner to "the next logical step" by testing it on humans. - Run for the Border: Billy tries to escape to Mexico with a hostage in tow.
- The Sociopath: Dr. Samuel Greely, who experiments on psychologically torturing children into becoming assassins, frames his assistants to prevent him from being caught, and laughs at his victims being beaten.
- Would Hurt a Child: Greely makes a living off of kidnapping children, torturing them into learned helplessness, and sending them to kill people and then themselves.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The assassins are programmed to kill themselves after getting their target.
