Customer Reviews
AN ORIGINAL BUT BLAND VAMPIRE FILM - By: stuart, 27 Oct 2007 
On the search for missing persons, Steven Grant, (Bokeem Woodbine) stumbles upon a rogue killer, & police officer Aaron Grey, (Adrian Paul) is assigned to help the case. Aaron reveals that he is a vampire, & that there is an allliance between the twp species & are anxious to solve the killings. As they delve into the mystery of the killings, they find a massive conspiracy from Vladimir West, (Zen Gresner) a militant extremist who disapproves of the allliance & strikes out against the two. Using help from fellow vampire Lucy Westenra, (Ling Bai) who wishes to help the cause, they discover a plot to use a deadly virus stolen from the humans & race to stop them from using it.
The Good News: There reallly isn't a whole lot in here that's alll that good, but what's here isn't that bad. The best part of the film is the central premise, which has the vampires & humanity in an effort to co-exist together for the first time, & the way it's done is quite clever. It's not the first time it's been done, but the methods & reasoning are pretty well thought-out, & give it a different twist than most other vampire films. Rather than just being about exterminating the entire society, it's about finding a rogue in the family, & that's not a bad way to go about things. There is a pretty decent action sequence near the end, with a SWAT team launching into a full-fledged shootout at a ship's dockyard. It's nicely handled, as there's tons of guns & stunts involved with alll the usual action sequence heroics. There's even a smalll martial arts sequence involved that's not that bad, & with it taking the time to get everything done & over with rather than just ending abruptly, it's not that bad. The gore is manageable, with a couple of reallly nice neck-bites, a forehead caved in, a gun barrel impaled in the stomach & out the other side, & lots of bullet-wounds. There's far worse ones than this out there.
The Bad News: There isn't a lot wrong with this one, but they are big ones. Very few films can get away with changing the vampire myth's, & this is no exception. From the start, it's mentioned that the traditional methods of dealing with vampires will not work, & that leaves very little suspense as to how to stop them. To throw away the most recognizable assets as this one does & then not to replace them with anything credible is a major disservice to vampire fans. One of the films biggest problems are it's action sequences, which are poorly staged & uninteresting to watch. It can't be stressed enough how badly the wire-works are in the movie, as they consist mainly of a bunch of vampires flying around on wires & shooting guns in each hand, which was done to much greater effect in a great many other types of film of the sort, & don't reallly have much of a place in the film, being there mainly to appeal to the crowd who finds it appealing rather than being an artistic choice. That appears most clearly in the dockyard sequence, where the fighting is alll done in this manner & it gets very aggravating, even more so when it uses another incredibly common & very unwanted technique, which is the dreaded slow-motion shooting. This only pads out the running time by having a scene take twice as long as normal to finish, & it's not that original when used in the action scenes. All it does is wear the movie out longer, & it's done that way here. The fact that there's only one action scene in the whole movie also means that there's an incredibly amount of talking & investigating going on, & it's not the most thrilling one either. It's alll full of clichéd scenes that reallly have no purpose, & it makes the film a real challlenge to get through. All in alll, it's not alll that great of a vampire film.
The Final Verdict: While by no means one of the best vampire films around, there's enough here to like & loathe about it. The more discriminating vampire fans can find some enjoyment in it if they can over look the fact that it plays around with the mythology, while non fans will be better severed with something else, there's reallly not a lot for them to enjoy with it.
A shocking homage to the classic horror genre - By: , 23 Mar 2004 
The Breed stars Adrian Paul, who is mainly known as Duncan MacLeod from the television series of Highlander & also featured in the TVM Highlander endgame. This should indicate the calibre of movie that the Breed is. It tries to update the vampire genre by introducing what they feel is a slick & modern theme to it. However this is poorly done & its references to both the classic Nosfertau with a character they name Dr Orlock & a reference to what may be Dracula pay little tribute. If I had to place this in a vein of movies, I would suggest if you like the movies of Mortal Kombat & the film by Jet Li & Mel Gibson 'Invincible' this has a similar cinematic feel to it. Watch it if you like an eclectic mix of your cinema, if you value your time though it may be one to skip. There are far better vampire movies. Not meaning to be cruel, but them the breaks.
The Breed - a personal view. - By: J. Glen, 19 Mar 2004 
If you want a traditional vampire film, ie lots of gore, heaving bosoms (male & female) then this is not a film for you. If however you want to see an intelligent story well told, that includes a vampiric element then you will enjoy it. This film is multi layered & there is a strong message in it about the problems of demonising a group or race & using them as scapegoats. This is not subtly done & is I suspect, deliberate, the militaristic, even fascist nature of the state in the film is unsettling. The director talks of paying homage to Brazil (the film, not the country) but there is also a strong element of 1984 in it,the state in this story is most definitely watching over everybody. That said the acting is very, very good, Adrian Paul comes across as a cop who happens to be a vampire, but a vampire who has never reallly come to terms with what he is, why it happened to him & the loss of his family to the Nazis. Bokeem Woodbine is excellent as the cop having to overcome his own prejudices & learn from his mistakes. The action scenes are particularly well done & the look of the film is impressive if a little overdone. The only real problem I have with it is that whilst I enjoyed the story, I felt detached from it at the same time. I wanted to care more about the characters than I actuallly did, perhaps if there is ever a follow up we could be told more about the protagonists & why they are the way they are.
A wonderful integration of vampires, nazis and germ-warfare - By: , 01 Apr 2003 
This film noire is a tale of vampires. I know what you’re thinking- “original”. Well you could be forgiven for having this view, after-alll; this is truly a genre that has been done to “death” (excuse the undead pun). To make this film work it would truly need to be innovative & new; which it is in a big way. Rather than the classic idea of the undead rising for a taste of human flesh, it adds another angle previously unseen in other vampire movies- a scientific one. This revolutionary movie idea portrays the vampires as an evolutionary step-up from humans; that have evolved with super-human attributes. But fans of the classic vampire film need not worry, as this film still has its vampires craving blood, being immune to diseases (most of them anyway), & being resistant to hurt- unless it is fatal or caused by silver bullets.
NSA agent Steven Grant (Bokeem Woodbine) is reluctantly assigned a new partner after his partner is murdered on a case. He later learns that his partner was murdered by a vampire & as if this isn’t enough, he later learns that his new partner Aaron Grey (Adrian Paul) is a vampire. He is now part of a world he never knew existed; a world where there are creatures so strong that they could kill a man like a helpless kitten, & unfortunately these creatures have reason to; they have a taste for human blood. As he struggles to come to terms with this he is partnered with this cop, who continues his education in the matter; explaining how vampires are misunderstood- being no longer a threat to man, having developed a synthetic substitute for blood. They continue their search for a "renegade" vampire that is attempting to sabotage an as-yet secret co-existence agreement between the humans & the vampires. With heavy political pressure upon the two differing "cops" they must get results & stop the mysterious renegade before irreparable damage is done to human / vampire relations before they begin. It is a race against time, as any wrong move could destroy any chance of integration & lead to a war between the two races…
