The Breed starts sometime in '...The Near Future...' where homicide detective Steven Grant (Bokeem Woodbine) & his partner Phil (Reed Diamond) follow up a lead on a particularly nasty serial killer who's running around at the moment. The lead happens to be a stolen van which they find & in a nearby building discover yet another dead body. The mysterious killer is also there, he most definitely resists arrest & even though Grant repeatedly shoots him he kills Phil by biting his neck. Grant survives but the killer disappears into the night... The 'National Security Agency' contacts Grant about the incident, the agencies director says that what he, & Phil, were dealing with was a renegade Vampire. He carries on to inform Grant that there are about 4000 Vampires worldwide & they revealed themselves to 'us' to try & live in harmony together, he also says that Vampires are genetic mutations & feed on a synthetic substitute for blood. Grant is assigned a new partner, a Vampire named Aaron Gray (Adrian Paul) & they are told to work together to discover the identity of the serial killing Vampire who wants to sabotage the peace between the two races...

This American Hungarian co-production was directed by Michael Oblowitz & is average at best. The script by Christos N. Gage & Ruth Fletcher is the real problem here. Too many things just didn't work for me, for a start could a high ranking scientist create a virus that has the potential to wipe out the entire human race without a SINGLE person questioning him or finding out? I mean the guy is even using the 'Nation Security Agency' laboratories for Christ's sake! Considering the Vampire race has been around for 1000's of years it seemed strange that there was only 4000 throughout the entire world & that they had never been noticed before. The central relationship between Grant the human & Gray the Vampire was clichéd & really cheesy, I mean at first they don't don't get on & seem mismatched but by the end they are best of friends & have saved each other's lives, we've seen it all before & done a lot better. The whole story is predictable & I can't believe it took Gray over half the film to figure out the painfully obvious. The whole concept just didn't work as far as I'm concerned & the film spent a good 30 minutes explaining it's own set of Vampire 'rules' as Grant would ask a question like how to kill a Vampire & Gray would tell him thus making sure we, the viewer that is, know as well. The breed also makes a few feeble attempts to say things about racism, trust & acceptance, you know all the clichéd things one would expect.

Director Oblowitz thinks he's making a cross between The Matrix (1999),Lethal Weapon (1987) & Vampires (1998),well no-one told him that you need a budget to pull that off. He films the fight scenes with people 'flying' through the air plus shooting & reloading their guns in a 'cool' way but they come off as looking ridiculous. He films everything with bleached out colours & a greenish tint. As for the films supposed style, you need to do a bit more than tilt the camera, shine a few neon lights & have some mist swirling in every shot. The gore is none existent, one neck biting, a couple of slit throats, a few gunshot wounds & someone explodes CGI style at the end & it looks terrible.

With a really low budget of about $400,000 it shows. The Breed has reasonable production values but it looks cheap throughout & you can tell it was shot in Europe, in this case Hungary. Even though it is meant to be set in the future the cars, clothes & the like suggest otherwise. I found the acting awful, whats with the gay moustache Paul? Woodbine gives a terrible performance & just wasn't right for the role at all. Ling Bai is quite sexy looking whenever she appears.

I was disappointed by The Breed, it's one of those films that make a fantastic trailer when they show ALL the cool bits in the space of two & a half minutes set against some techno music. Unfortunately there's another eighty seven & a half minutes to sit through if you decide to watch it. Personally I didn't think much of it.

In a near future, the existence of a city of vampires is disclosed to the human race. However, some killings of humans jeopardize the integration of the races. Detective Steve Grant (Bokeem Wooddbine) and the vampire Detective Aaron Gray (Adrien Paul) join forces investigating the murders. This movie has many essential components to be a great film: a wonderful photography, something between Gothic and noir, recalling 'Dark City' and even 'Matrix'; an intriguing and original plot, discussing the problems of integration of two very different races, which can be extrapolated for the present intolerance in the world; great costumes, good special effects and some good actors and actresses. However, the screenplay is confused, with an unnecessary romance, and the direction is cold, and in the end, we have a movie without emotion or vibration, basic elements for this type of story. Anyway, it is watchable and is a reasonable entertainment. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil) : 'Cidade dos Vampiros' ('Vampires City')

THE BREED is another dead-headed vampire flick that owes its very existence to THE MATRIX as well as vampire-society films like BLADE. This was shot in Hungary on the cheap and has that gritty digital look which makes the whole thing dull and cliched. Bokeem Woodbine is unusually cast as the lead, playing a weary cop investigating vampire murders and uncovering some unpleasant characters along the way. Adrian Paul plays a bland vampire who is occasionally hoisted into the air via some appalling wirework to shoot at the vampire villains. Bai Ling shows up in a memorably bizarre supporting role but is rather wasted here, while the script is purely profane and lunk-headed. This is a bland and derivative dud, in other words.